


Bucky Barnes: The Other Kid From Brooklyn, The Immigrant, The Closeted Homosexual

by TiredRazzberry



Series: Bucky Barnes [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: AU, Bucky Barnes-centric, Childhood Memories, Daily Bugle, Gen, Historians, Jewish Bucky Barnes, Not Canon Compliant, Other, Romanian Bucky Barnes, media fic, rampant speculation by historians about Bucky Barnes, the stucky is speculation by historians
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-14
Updated: 2017-10-25
Packaged: 2018-03-17 21:00:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 42,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3543638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TiredRazzberry/pseuds/TiredRazzberry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It took Bucky a moment to put his jaw back in proper order. "Are all these about me?" </p>
<p>***</p>
<p>Natalia gifts Bucky with a small library's worth of literature about himself for his birthday. Hesitantly, Bucky begins to read them one by one. Historians speculate wildly, fact is sorted from fiction, long settled dust is kicked up again, rumors' wings continue to flutter eighty years later, and Bucky seriously contemplates keying a few cars.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p> </p>
<p>  <b>Chapter 12 is an important update on the status of the story and the hiatus.<b></b></b></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Preface

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I own nothing. All rights belong to Marvel Comics.

Natalia gifted Bucky with a library’s worth of books for his 99th birthday. Fortunately for his shelves, they came stored on a Starkpad. Bucky didn’t remember ever telling his former protégé about his reading habits, but she was a spy by a trade and a meddler by nature, so he didn’t ask questions and simply thanked her for her present. Her gift was still six times better than Barton’s gift of a homemade Winter Soldier Buckybear.

Later that evening as Bucky readied for bed, he spotted the Starkpad perched on his bedside table, having mysteriously teleported from the coffee table where he left it. He had no doubt that it was Natalia’s doing. She had dodged into the bathroom before leaving with Sam and Sharon, and he'd been preoccupied by the card Coulson had passed along through their grapevine of friends and acquaintances to reach Bucky's hands on his birthday. Rolling his eyes, Bucky decided to placate his ex-student by doing some reading before bed.

Bucky hesitated in picking the tablet up, however. He’d been free of Hyrda’s control for a long time, but his conditioning still stuck in certain areas. Particularly where basic needs were concerned. A sleep-deprived asset was detrimental to the mission. As was a hungry one, or one that hadn’t taken a piss in ten years. The Asset must be single-minded, a tech had said to a newbie once within earshot of the the recently woken Asset. Such distractions were to be eliminated before he was sent out, lest the entire tech team suffer the consequences of a target escaping due to dulled reflexes and distracting hunger pangs.

Bucky remembered the Asset not cooperating with the techs sometimes. Not eating the meals they presented him after he emerged from cryo, stubbornly refusing to relieve himself when they loomed behind him in the bathroom waiting to take samples, and staying awake for longer eighteen hours unnecessarily. Bucky couldn’t remember his reasons. Part of him liked to believe it was his own way of rebelling, to spite his captors’ lab monkeys, but a more cynical side of him couldn’t help but chalk it up to him being a bit out of it each time he came out of deep freeze and being unable to process what was going on and what he was supposed to do.

It didn’t matter what his reasons were. Either way, it always ended badly for the Asset.

Even after escaping Hydra, Bucky still had a hard time staying up past nine most nights. Especially when he was home alone. Steve could usually manage to keep him up past 10 on a weekend, but even Sam and Natalia had yet to manage a similar feat. Bucky was unsure of how much reading he could get done before succumbing to his programming, and he sincerely wondered if it would be worth it. “I’ll wait until morning.” He told himself, climbing into bed.

Not three minutes later, his phone went off. It was a blocked number, which undoubtedly meant it was Natalia.

“Where's the bug, Natalia?” Bucky greeted her. 

“I was trying to ease you into this. I was going to let you find this out seemingly on your own.” She declared exasperatedly, totally ignoring his question. 

“What are you on about?” Bucky asked, confused.

Natalia sighed like a beleaguered assistant or the self-made man father of an irresponsible playboy. Basically like she was related to Stark somehow. “It’s been nearly two years since D.C. Half of that you spent as a hobo, and the other half you've spent cooped up in Steve’s apartment house-sitting while he’s on missions. You hardly go out for anything other than therapy and grocery shopping, so that means you probably haven’t seen what the world thinks of you 75 years after the fact.”

“I know what they think of me.” Grunted Bucky, thinking back on the display at Smithsonian. The world thought of him as a Martyr—no, actually. Steve was the Martyr of the Howling Commandos. Bucky was more like a Passion Bearer. _The only Howling Commando to give his life in service to his country._ If only they knew what happened after he fell from that train. _If Stark gets his way, soon they all will..._ Bucky shoved that thought away to the dark, fearful corner of his mind where it belonged.

“No, not quite.” Said Natalia, and Bucky grew confused again. “You only know what they think of Bucky Barnes the Howling Commando. But since you quote unquote died, a decent number of historians have delved into Bucky Barnes the other kid from Brooklyn, Bucky Barnes the immigrant, Bucky Barnes the possible closeted homosexual, and about a million other interpretations. You’re the most popular Howling Commando with historians, next to Steve of course. Mostly because you were both dead up until recently."

“What does this have to do with the Starkpad?” Asked Bucky as his eyes scanned the room for the hundredth time for hidden cameras or listening devices. He’d trained her too well. Not even sweeping the apartment twice a day and three times when she visited could keep Natalia’s eyes and ears out.

“Did you even look at the books I put on there?” She replied, sounding irked by the prospect. 

No, honestly. He’d really only given the library of digital books a quick appraisal where he was more focused on quantity than titles. Bucky picked up the Starkpad with his free hand, turned it on, and went to the library. The first three titles were past and present bestsellers with titles that made Bucky think the soccer moms he saw at the grocery store would love them. Every title there after had the words “Bucky”, “Barnes”, “James”, “Howling”, “Commando”, “Captain”, or “America” in it without fail. All forty seven of them. 

It took Bucky a moment to put his jaw back in proper order. “Are _all_ these about me?”

“Well a few are about the Howling Commandos in general, and at least two are supposed to be about just Cap, but all of them give Bucky Barnes more than a few chapters of analysis, and the rest of them focus on you entirely. Or your relationship with Cap.” Bucky could hear her smirk and rolled his eyes at the innuendo. 

“Did you read all of these?” Bucky inquired, scrolling through the 50 book strong library.

Natalia scoffed. “God no. Stark loaned me an intern.”

“Stark helped you do this?” Bucky asked doubtfully.

“I said I needed help with the paperwork on the last building I accidentally demolished.” The super spy confessed.

"And how long did it take that intern to read all these?" Bucky ventured warily. 

"Two months, give or take." Bucky blanched.

"Two whole months?! I won't have a spare minute until May unless I read nonstop!"

"Guess you better get started then." Natalia snarked and then she hang up with an irritating electronic beep. 

Bucky scowled at his phone and tossed it onto the neighboring pillow. Focusing his attention of the Starkpad, he was tempted to stash it away where he wouldn't have to deal with it again until next year's spring cleaning. But Natalia was just as good at making things reappear as she was at making people disappear, so that plan was quickly dismissed. The next thought to enter his mind was deleting half the library to save time. However, the fact Natalia had spent God knew how much money on her gift stopped him short. Glancing at the time at the top of the tablet's screen, Bucky decided it wouldn't hurt to read a few chapters of one of the biographies before bed, seeing as how reading all the books was really his only option.

He tapped on the fourth book in the library, which was titled simply, "Bucky Barnes: The Other Kid From Brooklyn".

The biography opened with a preface from one of the co-authors:

_When I was a little girl in the 1960s, I had a Buckybear with a soft blue velveteen coat that I stained countless times with finger-paints and my mother's makeup. He was always the guest of honor at my tea parties, and my preferred partner-in-crime when stealing either from my bed at night or from the cookie jar before dinner. My elder brother read Captain America comics in which Cap and his loyal sidekick Bucky protected the American Way against the evils of homegrown Communists and Soviet spies. He always let me read them when he was done, on the condition that I kept them "minty" as he put it. My brother adored Cap, wanted to join the army because of him, but my seven year old heart belonged Bucky Barnes. When I learned he was a real person in second grade, I was ecstatic._

_That following summer, my family took a trip to New York to visit our cousins. Knowing from the comics and school that Bucky Barnes was a proud Brooklynite, I begged my parents to take me there in hopes of meeting my hero and long-time crush in real life. My teacher had neglected to inform my class that Bucky Barnes had never returned home from the war like the rest of the Howling Commandos, you see, so you can imagine my soul crushing disappointment when my parents broke the news._

_My parents still took me and my brother to Brooklyn. In place of meeting the real life Bucky Barnes, we visited a small museum dedicated to Captain America. It occupied an old brownstone on the same street as the one Cap had grown up on, and the building had been preserved inside and out so passing through its front door was like walking into a different decade. It was like an ordinary house of the 1930s, except with about a thousand more pictures on the wall and framed newspaper clippings. A number of the common household items laying around had little cards proclaiming their historical significance as the radio Steve Rogers bought off a neighbor in 1938, or the last bedspring he ever slept on, or one of the spoons he used to slurp soup. My brother found it all very interesting while my father was forced to pick me up in order to restrain me from following the red arrows pointing up the staircase._

_On the second floor, there had been a small section devoted to Bucky Barnes stashed in a bedroom. I was amazed by all that I learned that day, by how much they had managed to cram into a little bedroom and a littler closet; it seemed to me that Bucky ought to have his own house for a museum. There was no telling what pattern there was on the wallpaper, that's how many pictures of James Buchanan Barnes hung on the wall. Every flat surface in the room, few as there were, overflowed with artifacts of the man's life. Dog-eared novels were stacked in a mountain on the bedside table beside a badly abused alarm clock. The obligatory card sitting next to the precarious stack informed that the books were stacked in the order it was believed Barnes liked them best:_ of Mice and Men _at the top,_ The Hobbit _below that,_ Brave New World _after that, and so on and so on until_ Gone With the Wind _was found at the bottom, to my great shock. (I personally loved the movie and wanted my hero to feel the same). The card anticipated the reader's shock by providing a quote of a note Barnes left on the inside back cover of the novel. "Romance is draining." I could hardly understand what he meant at that age, but was consoled by peeking in the closet. There I found Bucky Barnes' service uniform, a tailored suit for special occasions, several plain collared-shirts, and slacks with suspenders. It was interesting to see how my hero had dressed as my grandfather did to that very day. I remember my brother comparing his feet against the polished black cap-toe shoes we found on the closet floor and being miffed to find his much smaller. I believe at thirteen that he believed certain myths. While my parents explored the bathroom crammed between Bucky's bedroom and Cap's, I sprawled out on the bed on several layers of hand-stitched quilts and my brother flipped through a Washington High School year book. Before I ventured up to the third floor with the rest of my family, I did one more turn of the room, reading each one of the cards very carefully, and tried to commit each picture on the wall to memory._

_As we left the museum, I asked the woman in charge how they knew so much about Bucky Barnes to put on the cards. I even asked if she had met him and if that was how she knew his address growing up and what age he met Steve Rogers and the name of the boat he came to America with his family on. The woman was very nice about it all._

_" I am a historian." She explained. "I am a student of history, specifically World War II. It's my job to learn all I can about history and write about it so it can be taught to other people. I spent hours digging through old records and interviewing people-and so did a lot of other people-to make to this museum."_

_I was eight when I decided to become a historian, and thirteen when I decided to write a biography about Bucky Barnes and Bucky Barnes alone after being driven to my wit's end by the inexcusable lack of literature regarding him that did not give Steve Rogers the lion's share. At thirty-two, I've accomplished that feat with the help of my colleagues Sara Bryon and Richard Pinkerton and I could not be happier._

_-Bethany Freeman_

Bucky was torn between being touched by the author's words and being uncomfortable with them. The existence of Buckybears chaffed at him to no end. After all he'd done, even against his will, the thought of children looking up to him and wanting to have Cap's bestfriend be theirs too made him a bit queasy. To have woman motivated to write a whole book about him since she was just a kid made him feel ashamed for not being the man she'd grown up admiring so ardently. 

Remembering what Sam said about tearing himself down, however, Bucky shoved those negative emotions aside and picked up reading. 

_Chapter 1: Iacob Dulgheru_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Commentary is always welcome! And please kudos if you enjoyed the story so more readers can find it! 
> 
> If you're interested in more fanfiction by me, I also write ASOIAF, Game of Thrones, and Les Mis fanfiction. 
> 
> If you're interested in original work, I have a series where I post snippets of material from the novel I am working on. You might as well get a taste of what keeps me from updating for so long sometimes, haha. (No, but seriously, sorry for taking so long with updates.)
> 
> I'd really appreciate you guys checking out my other stuff, but thank you still for your continuous support of this work!


	2. Iacob

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I own nothing. All rights belong to Marvel comics.

_Chapter 1: Iacob Dulgheru_

Bucky stopped reading as soon as he had begun. He recognized that name. 

Briefly, he wondered if he'd known someone by that name once. A classmate in school. A buddy from basic.  _Who was this guy?_   Bucky thought with the beginnings of frustration curdling his relatively good mood so far that night. 

Realizing the best way to answer his question was to read on, he did just that. 

_Sergeant James Barnes' exact date of birth was a source of confusion among historians for years following the conclusion of World War II. The controversy began two years after the sergeant's death when a former member of the SSR published a biography on the Howling Commandos that gave the unit their unofficial moniker. The author, Elias Austen, sparked the debate by stating with great certainty that Sergeant Barnes died at the age of twenty-two. In the wake of the biography's release, Timothy "Dum Dum" Dugan stepped forward and declared that piece of information, among many other details in the biography, entirely false. His fellow commandos publicly agreed with him and the book was taken off the market so Austen's various claims within it could be better investigated._

_As it turned out, an approximate third of the biography was outright lies fabricated by Austen to give the appearance the SSR was everything the comics made it out to be in order to sell more books to a public still high on the euphoria of victory. Many of Austen's "insider tidbits", as one review fondly put it, were found to have no merit with no collaborating witnesses to various events of the book and several inconsistencies with official documents and accounts. Despite Austen's claims that the SSR was simply covering up the facts to hide even deeper, darker secrets than Agent Carter and Steve Rogers' so-called broom closet escapades, the public did turned on him._

_Despite losing the attention of the American people at large, Austen continued to receive attention for months after the scandal from various Howling Commando enthusiasts. One question posed to him that cropped up repeatedly was if his information on Barnes' date of birth was a lie or not. Austen firmly asserted that information was derived from the public record and not his own imagination. When asked to, he pointed historian David Fannigan in the direction of Shelbyville, Indiana, Barnes' supposed birthplace._

_Fannigan paid Shelbyville a visit in 1949 and combed the records for a birth certificate confirming Austen's assertion. What he found was reportedly exactly what he'd expected. Austen, being an amateur fact-checker, had published the birth date of the wrong James Buchanan Barnes. Fannigan confirmed this by interviewing the Shelbyville Barnes for his short article on the subject. Unlike the Sergeant, Mr. Barnes of Shelbyville was alive and well, and though he had served in the military as a sniper like the good Captain's Barnes, he had never received a rank higher than Corporal and had worn the standard army uniform rather than an iconic blue peacoat._

_Though Austen's claim was proven false, this was not the end of the controversy. Far from it. Seeking to back her colleague's claim, historian Ilse Young sought out Barnes' New York birth certificate in her free time. The weekend hunt quickly became a source of constant frustration for the then amateur historian and by 1950, Young was seeking the assistance of her fellow history majors at Columbia University. "The Search For Bucky Barnes' Birth Certificate" made headlines when Young's professor made his student's hunt into the class' official pet project. Offices of public record and the neighborhoods of Brooklyn were plagued by students hungry for extra credit throughout the winter months of 1950 and 1951._

_The students found no evidence to suggest that Barnes was a native of New York, let alone Brooklyn, as previously thought. Curious and eager for answers, Fannigan once again questioned Austen on his sources. Austen confessed that he was put under the impression that the Mr. Barnes of Shelbyville and Sergeant Barnes were one in the same by the fact James Buchanan Barnes of Brooklyn didn't appear to have existed prior to the 1930 census. Mr. Barnes of Shelbyville admitted his mother had taken him and lived with her parents in Brooklyn for a year when he was a child, thus accounting for the error on Austen's part. However, Fannigan found it inexcusable that Austen neglected to notice that the James Buchanan Barnes of Brooklyn who would grow up to become the famous Sergeant Barnes of the Howling Commandos that appeared for the first time on the 1930 census was listed as fourteen years old at the time,_ not _seven years old._

_Armed with the information that Barnes had indeed been born in 1916 rather than Austen's purported 1922, Fannigan set out to put an end to mystery of where exactly the beloved Sergeant came from once and for all. The seasoned historian he was, Fannigan abandoned the lost cause of American birth certificates and turned his attention to immigration records. The growing community of Howling Commando and Captain America historians expected a speedy resolution to the mess. To their disappointment, Fannigan found no record of James Buchanan Barnes' immigration , which he had calculated to have occurred between the 1920 census and the summer of 1927. Nor did he find a record of his parents, George and Winifred Barnes' immigration._

_Driven to his wits' end by the newest brick wall in his quest for the truth, Fannigan published a short but nonetheless potent article on the subject of the search and how it frustrated him. "Thanks to the toil of Miss Young and her classmates, it is certain that James Buchanan Barnes was not born on American soil as was long thought. Sadly, we have no idea what nation we owe for such an icon, as the public record has failed us. No major port city in the nation possesses a definitive record of George and Winifred Barnes entering America with or without their children. Even sadder, the man is not around to tell us for himself where he came from, his parents have succumbed to their grief, and his sisters are tight-lipped and hidden from the public eye...I will continue to pursue the truth, even if I must seek unorthodox avenues. But I am still very much open to the orthodox...I welcome any information on the good sergeant's origins." Howling Commando and lover of history Gabriel Jones read the article in the summer of 1951 and sent a letter to Fannigan the following day. The contents of the letter remain unknown, but Fannigan replied to it by extending an invitation to Jones to speak with him in New York. Several excerpts from the interview that took place were included in Fannigan's final article on the subject of Sergeant Barnes' origins, in which he revealed Barnes' status as a Romanian immigrant._

_Gabriel Jones was given credit as the source of this revelation, along with Rebecca Barnes and US immigration records from 1922._

_"Our first hint was when we, the Commandos, were camped out near a little northern Italian town. Some girls were flirting with us, not that we could understand each other very well. I specialized in foreign language at Brown but I could hardly understand their Italian. I caught that they were from Hungary though. Barnes had been asleep in his tent when the girls came along, but he woke up pretty quickly. One of the girls was prancing around the fire, trying to act all seductive, but in a joking sort of way; her dress brushed the flames and singed the fabric. She jumped and screamed bloody murder. Dum Dum and I tried to calm her down but it was too late._

_"Bucky was really light sleeper and...a bit jumpy when it came to loud noises. He woke up and stormed out of his and Cap's tent with his gun. That only scared the girls and they exclaimed something in what I guess was Hungarian or Romanian. Bucky stopped dead in his tracks and stared for a minute at the girls. Then he got really embarrassed and put his gun away. He apologized to the girls in what he later told us was Romanian. At the time we could only stare at him like he'd grown a second head. The girls understood him, though, and said it was okay, according to Barnes. He sat around the fire with all of us and the girls after that. He ended up pretty popular with them despite their rough start, probably because they could actually carry on a decent conversation with him unlike the rest of us. When the girls left, Morita asked Buck how he knew Romanian. He sidestepped the question rather artfully."_

_-Gabriel Jones,_ Bucky Barnes the Immigrant _by David Fannigan, 1951_

_Jones went on to say that shortly after this incident, the Commandos discussed their various childhoods around the campfire, hoping to learn more about their comrades. Steve Rogers spoke of his childhood before Barnes did and it did not go unnoticed by the Commandos that Barnes went unmentioned prior to Rogers' recollections of age nine. When Barnes' turn to share came, he conspicuously neglected to mention his life prior to age seven. From this, the Commandos gathered that Rogers and Barnes had met in their later childhoods, when Barnes was about eleven, and their suspicions were piqued by Barnes' evasiveness of his early childhood. Especially after all the other commandos exchanged tale of first grade mischief and Barnes refused to travel back beyond the second grade._

_Barnes eventually confessed his Romanian origins to his fellow Howling Commandos after encountering Romanian Hydra agents, an experience that apparently rattled Barnes. When asked by Fannigan why Barnes concealed his heritage up until that point, Jones replied that Barnes's Jewish identity likely played a part. "Antisemitism has roots in xenophobia. Jewish people have long been discriminated against for being_ other  _in the eyes of the majority of pretty much any land they dwell in. Men and women like myself and Morita have faced similar circumstances in America, as have many first-generation immigrants like Buck. Being an immigrant and Jewish was a double whammy for Bucky. It's no wonder that his family tried their best to conceal at least one of those_ other  _traits that would make him a target."_

_Following his interview with Jones, Fannigan approached Rebecca Barnes, the Sergaent's sister. This was a bold move as Miss Barnes had actively avoided the topic of her brother and his best friend so well that by 1951, people had given up entirely on ever seeing her sit down to a proper interview. In the early autumn of 1951, Fannigan mailed Miss Barnes a letter and a transcript of his interview with Gabe Jones, and respectfully requested an interview on the subject of her family's Jewish-Romanian roots. Fannigan honestly expected no response and was in the process of contacting Rebecca's more susceptible though likely less informed sister Georgette when Miss Barnes' reply arrived. The two met for coffee in late autumn and that winter her words from that meeting were published along with Jones' in Fannigan's last article on the Barnes Birth Mystery._

_The first question Fannigan asked Miss Barnes was of her family's immigration: when and why did they leave Romania?_

_"Romania does not have a history of kindness towards Jews. What country does these days? My father and mother had wanted to leave Romania during the Great War, but were frightened by stories of German U-boats sinking ships in the Atlantic. They resolved to stay only until the war was over. When the war was over, however, the economy began to pick up and Jews were even awarded rights as minorities and official citizenship. Hoping that things would get better, my family stayed._

_"I was hardly three when the war ended and it seemed like we wouldn't have to flee our home, and hardly four when our house was vandalized while we were at temple. Who ever had done it had painted the word for communist and the word for Jew on the living room walls in red paint, and in black paint they said 'mergi la rusia' and 'ieși' which mean 'go to Russia' and 'get out'. There were other things, but I don't want to talk about them. Ours wasn't the only house to be vandalized. We lived in a neighborhood with several other Jewish families. It seemed like the whole street was covered in red and black paint."_

_Fannigan, aghast at the prospect, asked Miss Barnes if her family were indeed communists. Miss Barnes vehemently denied it, as she would for years afterwards in the face of such allegations as Senator Proctor's wife._

_"Many Jewish people were communist after the war in Romania. Not all of them, but enough to, for people to be very...We were on the topic of why we left, right? Let's get back on track. My family stayed in Romanian until 1922 out of vain hope that things would get better. But they didn't. As time wore on, Romania started to turn its back on us and we had no choice but to leave in hopes of finding acceptance abroad."_

_The Barnes, then known as the Dulgheru family, left Romania in January 1922 when Rebecca and her brother were five and six respectively. On the passenger manifest of the_ S.S Borias,  _the siblings are listed as Iacob and Rebeka. Their parents, 'George' and 'Winifred', were listed as Gheorghe and Fredrika. Fannigan inquired when these name changes took place. Miss Barnes admitted possessing only a "fuzzy" memory of the event._

_"We'd just left Ellis Island, I remember that much. Our first week was spent in an apartment on Long Island with another family; relatives, I think. Third-cousins twice-removed, something like that. Papa went to go find work, which we didn't think would be any trouble. He was a very good tailor, you see, and he took my brother along on interviews in his best and, at the time, only suit to show off his skills. No one wanted to believe it at first, but the reason he kept being turned away was because he was a Jewish immigrant. Papa didn't stew over that though. He jumped into action. The first thing he did was change our family name. He got Barnes from a newspaper or something like that. Then he had us change our names. Rebeka with a 'k' became Rebecca with two 'c's. Gheorghe and Fredrika became George and Winifred, though Mama preferred to go by Freddie as she did back...." Fannigan noted a brief pause where he stated "I thought Miss Barnes might have been about to call Romania 'home'. Whatever she meant, she continued on simply by repeating herself. "As she did back in Romania. My brother became James; not Jacob because Bucky didn't want anyone calling him 'Jake' as a kid."_

_"Where did Buchanan come from?" Asked Fannigan. Of course it was very important to know where Bucky Barnes' iconic middle name from which his even more iconic nickname was derived came from. There is, after all, no in-between from Bucky to James Buchanan Barnes._

_"My father picked it out of the air. President Buchanan was probably the only US president he knew when we arrived. Don't ask me why. Papa was a bit of an oddball, honestly."  Miss Barnes explained blithely. "My own middle name, Florence, came from Florence Deshon, Mama's favorite American actress who had died that very year in New York."_

_Next, Fannigan asked how the family hid their accents. Miss Barnes explained that her father practiced for weeks to hide his accent and his wife purposefully crafted the image of a painfully shy housewife to avoid extensive conversation until such time as her accent improved. Rebecca and her brother adapted near-flawless America accents within a few months time from prolonged exposure to various American playmates. With the foreign accents and names gone, 'Mr. Barnes' was able to acquire a job by the summer and soon the family was able to move into an apartment of their own in Brooklyn._

_Fannigan's final inquiry was the most pointed. "Why give up being Romanian instead of Jewish faith? The latter is certainly more troublesome than the former as far as a lot of people are concerned."_

_Miss Barnes gave a very curt reply. "Like I said, Romania turned its back on us. Did the Jewish faith? No. Our faith has always been there to give us strength. Has our Romanian ancestry ever been so empowering? Never. Why then would we choose it over our faith?"_

_Sergeant Barnes'_ _secret origins quickly became the subject of yet another controversy, much to Fannigan's chagrin. Thankfully, this controversy was only among historians particularly concerned with Barnes' relationship with Captain America, both the man and the image, so Fannigan was free to fall back into obscurity and continue his studies on the interwar period undisturbed, content with the knowledge that he had almost single-handedly unearthed the Barnes' family history for all the world to examine with fine-tooth combs and magnifying glasses in hopes of better understanding one of World War II's most famous soldiers._

Bucky numbly set the Starkpad aside on the bedside table. His head was swimming, his mouth was dry, and he could hardly will himself to move. It felt like he'd been climbing a ladder only to have someone tie one end of a rope around his waist and the other to an anvil which they proceeded to drop from a tenth-story window. He'd thought he'd made progress in the last two years. He'd thought that he could remember most things now. He remembered the prayers and the Rabbi who liked sweets too much for his own good. He remembered the first girl he ever kissed's name. He remembered things that not even Steve could. He remembered his  _name._

Or so he thought.

Bucky had thought that he was getting better. 

He really, _really_ had. 

* * *

 Steve crept through the front door at six o'clock the next morning with his dufflebag flung over his shoulder and his shield on his arm. Bucky saw him from the living room and was tempted to move back into his bedroom but thought better of fleeing. Steve might get the impression he'd done something wrong. God knew how, since he'd been gone for days. 

"Morning, Buck." Steve greeted him as he passed from the foyer into the adjacent kitchen. 

"Morning." Bucky quietly replied. 

"How long you been up?" 

"An hour." 

"You want breakfast? I can whip some eggs up." 

"No thanks." 

"You already eat?" 

"No."

"You sure you don't want anything?" 

"Yes." 

"Am I going to get more than one word, two word responses from you? Is this a bad day?" Asked Steve with hardly contained worried. 

"Go to bed, Rogers." Bucky grunted, tucking the Starkpad under his arm and standing from the sofa. 

"Buck, are you alright?" Steve asked earnestly. 

"I'm fine. Just tired. Didn't sleep well." Bucky answered. Steve's expression quickly became etched with understanding and he nodded accordingly. He suggested Bucky go back to bed and then when he woke up, they could go out to breakfast for a belated birthday celebration. Bucky agreed and started towards his bedroom, only pausing to warn Steve, "Natasha bugged the place again. You'll have to shower in your boxers until I get around to sweeping the apartment." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can guess pretty easily that my inspiration for Romanian Bucky came from Sebastian Stan.
> 
> Thank you for reading! Commentary is more than welcome! Please kudos if you enjoyed the story, and thanks for your continued support of this work!
> 
> If you're interested in more fanfiction by me, I also write ASOIAF, Game of Thrones, and Les Mis fanfiction. 
> 
> If you're interested in original work, I have a series where I post snippets of material from the novel I am working on. You might as well get a taste of what keeps me from updating for so long sometimes, haha. (No, but seriously, sorry for taking so long with updates.)
> 
> I'd really appreciate you guys checking out my other stuff, but thank you still for your continuous support of this work!


	3. The Little Things

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I own nothing. All rights belong to Marvel Comics.

Steve woke up around nine o'clock, thankful for having mastered the art of sleeping on the quinjet on the way home. After showering--not in his boxers because Natasha wouldn't go  _that_ far with them--he crept down the hall to check on Bucky. Peaking through the cracked door, he saw his friend was still dead to the world and safely cocooned in his comforter. Relieved, Steve was about to head back to his own room when he noticed a tiny red light blinking at him. On the bedside table sat a sleek black Starkpad. The light on the side was flashing red, indicating the battery was about to die. 

Knowing Bucky loved reading and the Starkpad was probably that gift Natasha spoken of last week during their last mission together, Steve decided to do his good deed for the day by tiptoeing into Bucky's bedroom, picking up the Starkpad, and taking it out to the charging stand in the living room universal to all the Stark technology Tony pelted the whole team with. The black screen lit up once connected, revealing what Bucky had been reading. Steve's eye widened in surprise at the sight of a picture of himself and Bucky when they were teenagers. 

The picture was sepia, the only color besides warm golden browns being red ink at the bottom right corner.  _July 4, 1932_ , Sarah Rogers' inked handwriting read. 

Steve remembered the day the picture was taken well enough. It was his fourteenth birthday and his ma had saved up to buy him some new shoes. Bucky's gift that year was a nice tailored jacket that didn't hang on him like his other clothes had at that age in particular. With the help of some hair gel, Steve had looked pretty smooth in his and Bucky's opinion. Though his ma kept insisting he was as cute as a bug's ears, and Bucky always had nice clothes and hair thanks to his dad, so after awhile Steve started to feel kind of doggy, like a kid at his cousin's wedding. The picture was taken outside Mr. Barnes' tailory by his ma right before they went to get dinner and watch the fireworks. In the store window behind Steve and Bucky, Mr. Barnes' shadowy figure stood behind the counter getting ready to close up shop while his younger daughters Georgette and Andrea fidgeted by the door. 

Steve smiled fondly at the picture but wondered why it was on the Starkpad screen in the first place. He looked to the text below for answers. 

_The bond between the Barnes family and the Rogers' family, though looked upon in a fond light today by fans of Captain America and his faithful 'sidekick', was initially thought of as strange by the friends, relatives, and neighbors of the two families. The friendship between James and Steven alone was seen as unlikely. Barnes was two years older than Rogers, Jewish where as Rogers was a Roman Catholic, and the Barnes family was of a slightly higher economic class than Nurse Rogers and her son. Not to mention Barnes' status as a good student and talented athlete at school. Overachiever, some called him. Rogers was known as a bit of a troublemaker who favored doodling in his notebook over taking notes, and his health prevented him from engaging in sports like Barnes, though it is likely he very much wanted to participate._

_Barnes' friendship with Rogers was born in the summer of 1927. It is unknown how exactly the two met though three popular theories have wormed their way into pop culture, all appearing in the Captain America comics and radio dramas, the 1979 Captain America movie, and the most recent film trilogy at one point or another. From most to least popularly recognized as fact, the three theories go as such:_

  * _In the summer of 1927, an eleven year old James "Bucky" Barnes was walking home from temple when he stumbled upon a fight in an alley. A "needle thin boy" was taking a "bumbling" from boys numbering between three and a half dozen. Barnes, being older than all the boys in the alley and tall for his age, stepped in and easily shooed the hooligans away, saving the thin boy who he would later know as Steve Rogers. From that day forward, Barnes became Rogers' protector and surrogate older brother._
  * _In the summer of 1927, the Barnes family moved into the same apartment building as the Rogers'. While initially dismissive of the scrawny nine year old from apartment C4, Barnes soon grew fond of the spitfire and started tagging along after him both to keep him out of trouble and sometimes join him in it._
  * _In the summer of 1927, an eleven year old Bucky Barnes was on the brink of falling in with a "bad crowd" when little Steve Rogers brimming with righteousness waltzed into his life and saved him from going down the wrong path, foreshadowing young Rogers' future as an American hero. An overwhelmingly grateful Barnes befriended and became forever loyal to Rogers._



_There are several gaping holes in each of these theories, as one could imagine._

"Damn right there are." Steve muttered to himself. 

"What's right?" Steve looked over his shoulder to find Bucky emerging from the hall the bedrooms and bathroom were situated in. His cheeks reddened at being caught snooping.

"Sorry, I was reading this." He confessed. Bucky froze up and his formerly drowsy expression pinched with trepidation. 

"How much?" He asked. 

"Just a few paragraphs." Steve assured him. He felt guilty, however, for even reading one sentence.  _You need to respect his privacy, you idiot,_ he chided himself. 

Bucky nodded slowly and, casting the charging tablet a wary glance, asked _what_ he had read. 

"It talked about how strange it was that we ended up friends, which I guess is true for the times we grew up in. But then it started talking about how no one really knew  _how_ we became friends and it listed a few theories that were out there that people really liked. Of course they were all dead wrong." Steve chuckled. Dead wrong, but cute enough to forgive.  Bucky snorted and grinned, likely feeling the same way. "Yeah, I was reading that part last night before I went to bed. They'd make for good cartoons, at least." 

Steve debated for a moment whether it was a good idea or not to ask. He didn't want either of them getting upset if the answer was 'no'. However, he couldn't quite help himself, not when there was a possibility of Bucky saying 'yes'. Hesitantly, Steve asked, "Do you remember how we met?" 

Relief washed over Steve as Bucky rolled his eyes. "Yeah, of course. Through Arnie Roth." He answered and Steve smiled unabashedly as Bucky continued, "Arnie went to the same synagogue as my family and was in the same grade as you at school, so we ended up spending weekends playing and reading dime novels together. When Arnie moved to Queens, we just sort of stuck together." It was clear Bucky only continued for his own sake, to prove he remembered. To see Steve smile broadly and nod along, confirming "yeah, yeah, that's exactly what happened" made the knots still in his stomach from last night finally begin to loosen.

"I wish there was some way to tell other people that story. It's total bunk that people feel the need to make one of us into a knight in shining armor to the other's damsel in distress. The theory with the apartments isn't so bad, but it still makes me out as your babysitter and you as a little troublema--wait a sec, never mind." Bucky grinned wickedly, his bedhead enhancing the feral image. "That's 100% fact." 

Steve gave his metal arm a shove as he passed him on his way back to his bedroom. "Take a shower, jerk." 

* * *

"So Natasha put basically nothing but biographies on there?" Steve asked after Bucky explained her birthday present to him over breakfast. 

"There's three books that I think may be mommy porn. That's what they're calling it nowadays, right?" Bucky answered blithely as he prodded at his fancy omelet.

Steve flushed and laughed at the same time. "I didn't need to know that." He mumbled, turning his attention back to his Eggs Benedict. 

Bucky grinned cruelly across the table at his flustered reaction. "Well, you asked." A beat. "Are you going to take off that stupid baseball cap? You don't even like the Yankees." 

Steve only pulled the bill down farther to cover his bespectacled eyes. "Call me traitor all you like. We're in public. This is the only way I can go unnoticed." 

"Really? Because we're sitting in the middle of a fancy village cafe surrounded by fedoras and silk scarves, so you actually stick out like a sore thumb with your Joe-Shmoe get-up. Aside from those glasses, of course." Bucky teased. He made a point of teasing Steve when he was a bit off kilter like today, to make his friend think he was doing better than what he was. Bucky didn't like worrying Steve, especially when he just got back from a mission. He'd ask about that, too, it'd make an even better distraction, but there 

"You're one to talk, Mr. Grunge Metal." Steve retorted, smiling. 

Bucky blinked with confusion. "Grunge what-now?" 

Steve shook his head. "Nevermind. I just mean you stick out a bit too. You look like this guy Kurt Cobain almost, except with brown hair." 

Bucky ran a hand through his aforementioned mentioned brown hair, sweeping it out of his face. "Well don't get used to it. As soon as I find a barber I trust near my neck with sharp objects, I'm getting it cut." He declared in a grumble. Though Natalia and Sam were vocal about their fondness of his hair, Bucky had sided long ago with the grannies at the grocery store who gave him dirty looks. Even if he _did_ really want to give them a stern talking to about respecting their elders. 

"I could do it." Steve offered.

Bucky barked a laugh. "You  _wish_ I didn't remember the last time you cut someone's hair!" 

"Jacques' hair didn't look that bad." 

"Your red ears say otherwise. It was so uneven that the only way we could fix it was by shaving his head. You're lucky his hair grew fast, otherwise he might have given you an exploding birthday cake come July." Said Bucky, and Steve smiled like a dope at that, sobering Bucky immediately. As often as it felt great to see Steve smile and be happy that his memories were returning, it was just as often extremely uncomfortable. It reminded Bucky how big of a deal all those little details really were, though when he recalled them in the spur of the moment they rarely seemed like it. It only made it all the more clear how terrible the situation had been and still was. His discovery last night was yet another nail in the coffin of his denial. 

"Buck, are you okay?" Steve asked tentatively. 

Bucky shook himself. "'m fine." 

"That's a lie." Steve leveled Bucky with a stern, yet sympathetic look. "Buck, you can't bottle things up. We talked about this with Sam. Remember?" 

"I wish." Bucky grumbled, and he immediately regretted it when Steve went bug-eyed. "I remember what Sam said!" He added hastily. 

Steve relaxed some but remained battle ready. Because every one of these conversations was a battle. "But you don't remember something else. What?" He asked quietly, but direct.  

"You want a list?" Bucky snarked. 

"Barnes." Steve warned. The sternness didn't really faze Bucky, but the worry in his friend's eyes certainly did. Steve was the master of the stiff upper-lip long before the serum. Schoolyard bullies hadn't tolerated crybaby shrimp, so Steve had acted like an irritable crab in their childhood, always ready to pinch the toe of anyone who dared kick sand his way. Or the way of others. The serum had fixed a lot, but it didn't fix the one chink in Steve's armor: his big ole expressive eyes. 

"It's about that biography I was reading." Bucky confessed. "It opened with a chapter that...It talked about things I can't remember in the slightest. Big things." 

"What was the chapter about?"  

"I..." Bucky bit his lip and reached into his jacket. He pulled out the Starkpad and slid it across the table. "Just read." 

Steve read for a little over ten minutes. Throughout those ten minutes, his expression slowly grew more and more disheartened. When he was done, he set the Starkpad down with gray face and asked, "Did you really not remember any of that?"

Bucky nodded reluctantly, almost ashamed of himself. 

"Did you know? Before I told the Commandos, I mean." Said Bucky after an uncomfortable silence between them, filled only by the faint clanking of dishes being washed in the cafe kitchen and laughter at a neighboring table.  

Steve looked offended by the insinuation. "Of course. You told me not long after we met, actually." 

"Really? That chapter gave me the impression it was some deep dark secret for me." He couldn't help feeling envious of his past self, if being an immigrant was the ugliest skeleton in his closet. 

"I don't think it was as severe as the book makes it out. By the time we became friends, you and your folks hadn't been 'fresh off the boat' for a good while. Still, you and them didn't make a show of being immigrants, just in case; you just didn't talk about it enough for it to be common knowledge around Brooklyn. As for not telling the Commandos, well, we'd only _just_ met them. After you saw that Falsworth, Dernier, and Dum Dum were good with Morita and Jones, you loosened your lips a bit." 

"And the Romanian Hydra agents?" 

Steve avoided eye-contact. "I...don't really know much about that. I was on the other side of the facility when that went down, and you didn't really talk about it afterwards."

Bucky heaved a sigh. "None of this explains why I didn't remember it on my own. How could I not remember something like that? I remembered being Jewish easily enough!" He combed the hair out of his face and slumped backwards in his chair to stare up at the ceiling of the cafe, a tangle of exposed pipes and vents. "I need to talk to my sister."

"I'll call her care home to set up a visit." 

* * *

At ninety-one, Andrea was still the human embodiment of a bottle of bubbly champagne. Bucky remembered her being a cheerful and energetic youth. "Vivacious" was a term often applied to her, both in flattering and scornful manners by her fellow women. It used to drive Bucky nuts because he was constantly torn between defending his sister and wanting to reign her in before she did something stupid. Fortunately, it turned out he had nothing to worry about. Even without her big brother around to protect her, and with Rebecca and Georgette busy with their own lives, Andrea managed just fine. She became a canary after she graduated high school and ended up working at a swanky club in Manhattan. She eventually married the owner, had some nice smart kids like herself, and took care of herself well enough to be there to finally welcome her big brother home.

Andrea greeted him with a wide smile when he entered her room. "Bucky!" She sang, spreading skinny arms and inviting him into a hug. 

Bucky returned the smile, honestly as ecstatic each time he saw her as he was bowled over to see how she'd changed. He gently wrapped his arms around her tiny frame and pressed a kiss to the top of her head, lingering for a moment with his eyes closed, before taking a seat by her bed. 

"I'm so happy you came to visit." Said Andrea, cheery as ever. "It was your birthday yesterday, right? I know you probably don't expect a gift from me, but I had my granddaughter post a card to you. You should get it in the next few days. I hope she picked out one with a joke!" 

"She did. I got it yesterday morning in the mail and loved it. It's sitting on the mantle at home right now." 

"That's great. I'm glad you liked it." Andrea cheered. "So what brings you to visit?" 

Bucky flushed with shame for having ulterior motives. "I came to ask some questions about my memories." He answered sheepishly. 

Andrea didn't seem insulted by the fact he wasn't necessarily there to see her. "Fire away then, Buck. I'm not getting any younger." She laughingly replied. 

It took a moment to find the courage to admit the thing he had forgotten. "It's about Romania. I can't remember anything about it: living there, leaving. Anything." 

"Oh, that old business? I don't see why you'd be worked up over that." Andrea waved a dismissive hand. 

"Andy, I can't remember  _anything._ Doesn't that seem strange to you?" Bucky watched with confusion as his little sister rolled her eyes at him. 

"Buck, you wouldn't have trouble remembering something if you cared about it. And trust me, you didn't give a damn about Romania. Neither did Mama, Papa, or Rebecca. Once you left, that place was dead to you all." 

"But I remembered all these little, inconsequential things well enough." Bucky insisted. "I'm sure I didn't give a damn about the rusty swings at the park we played at as kids, or those frilly blue curtains Mama hung on all the windows, or that starving dog that lived in the alley next to our apartment building, yet I remembered all those things clearly long before I learned I was Romanian." 

Andrea sighed so exasperatedly that her tiny frame lost half its mass before smiling fondly at him like he was her favorite idiot. Some things never changed. "I'm sorry. You must have missed the memo while you were away all those years. All those 'little, inconsequential things' are a lot more important than what we think when we're young, and the so-called big things, like being born in Romania, turn out be quite the opposite. The things we think define us rarely ever actually do, Buck." She chided him. Bucky had no retort.

A nurse poked her head in and asked Andrea if she and her grandson needed anything. Andrea asked to be moved out onto the terrace to enjoy the nice day and some drinks for herself and Bucky. Once out on the terrace in two white plastic chairs with bottles of mineral water in hand as they looked out over Manhattan, Bucky turned to his sister and hesitantly asked her if she'd ever read a biography written about him, Steve, and the other commandos.

"Well, of course, Buck! A lady needs a good laugh once in awhile." She said with a grin. 

Bucky groaned, dreading the buckets of bullshit he was sure to come upon as he worked through his library. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Smooth-30s slang for well-dressed but for no good reason really  
> *Doggy-30s slang for well-dressed but in a self-consciousness way  
> *Cute as a bug's ears-30s slang for very cute  
> *Canary-slang for a female singer 
> 
> Thank you for reading! Please leave a comment below! Please kudos! Just, do whatever makes you comfortable, guys! 
> 
> If you're interested in more fanfiction by me, I also write ASOIAF, Game of Thrones, and Les Mis fanfiction. 
> 
> If you're interested in original work, I have a series where I post snippets of material from the novel I am working on. You might as well get a taste of what keeps me from updating for so long sometimes, haha. (No, but seriously, sorry for taking so long with updates.)
> 
> I'd really appreciate you guys checking out my other stuff, but thank you still for your continuous support of this work!


	4. Championing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I own nothing. All rights belong to Marvel comics.

_The Other Kid From Brooklyn_ continued to be a painful read long after Bucky finished the first chapter. Freeman and her co-authors painted him heroically and their favoritism towards him over Steve and the other commandos grew more blatant with each paragraph. The book concluded with his death in the Alps, which was cast in the light of a heroic sacrifice for the American people. Bucky deleted the book from his library when he was finished. Not out of any ill will towards the authors, but because his feelings of guilt from the preface had been mounting since chapter five when they covered his draft into the military, and he was finally overwhelmed by Freeman's eloquently written final paragraph.

 _Bucky Barnes was the only Howling Commando to give his life in service to his country. Though he no longer lives and breathes as a man, his friendship with Steve Rogers and his fellow Commandos, his bravery and loyalty, his wit and skills as a soldier live on in the hearts of all Americans who ever owned a Bucky Bear, read the_ Captain America _comics, or watched a Cap cartoon as children. Bucky has been immortalized as America's best friend and is as unforgettable as his blue peacoat._

"What are you thinking about, Buck?" Steve called from the kitchen. He was leaning over the counter separating the kitchen and the living room with a furrowed brow of concern. His eyes flitted suspiciously over the Starkpad in Bucky's lap. 

"Nothin' really." Bucky lied easily. "Just trying to sort out everyone's fixation on that peacoat. If I'd known people were going to pay so much attention to my clothes during the war, I might have worn something more badass, like a black trenchcoat and double-breasted black suit."

Steve rolled his eyes as he pushed off the counter. "You and your gangster fetish." He sighed, turning his attention back to fixing dinner.   

* * *

Two weeks and two books later, Bucky began reading  _The Unwilling Heroes: Victims of the Draft_. His interest was immediately piqued by the title but he was wary of it for the exact same reason. He looked up an synopsis online to see what he was getting into. Unlike  _The Other Kid From Brooklyn, The Story of Bucky Barnes, and The Howling Commandos: Un-Redacted,_ _The Unwilling Heroes_ didn't just focus on the soldiers in the war against Hydra. It focused on several famous soldiers throughout American history who were drafted into the wars that would make them household names. The author Alan Winslow apparently got a lot of flack for "mudslinging" and "trampling on good names", but more than one of the surviving men featured in the book stepped forward and declared the book a "refreshing take". 

Bucky looked at the table of contents, intending to find his own name and go directly to that chapter, but reading the names of his brothers in arms, he soon felt it disrespectful to skip over them. He read ten chapters of fear, anxiety, acceptance, bitterness, and recovery, engrossed in empathy and unshakable nausea, before coming upon his own chapter. 

_Chapter 11:_

_Bucky Barnes_

_James Buchanan Barnes, today known primarily as "Bucky", was born on March 10th, 1916 in Arad, Romania as Icaob Dulberger. His family immigrated to the States when he was six years old under the mounting pressure of antisemitism as well as anti-communist and anti-Russian sentiments in their homeland. They hoped to find acceptance and peace in America. From the moment they stepped off the_ S.S Borias,  _however, their hopes were repeatedly dashed. The first blow came in the form of Mr. Dulberger's job hunt. His Jewish faith and immigrant status repelled prospective employers. The Dulbergers' were forced to shed their Romanian identities--their culture and native tongue, names and accents--and adopt American ways within a matter of weeks in order to survive. A wall was built between Iacob Dulberger and Bucky Barnes._

_It is doubtless that the loss of one half of his identity pained Barnes. Several contemporaries have published papers speculating what effect such an ordeal would have on a person, some, such as Elias Austen, going as far as to link it to his famous undying loyalty to Captain America and others theorizing the possible prior trauma made his much speculated upon PTSD all the worse. It will never be known for certain how deep the scar ran, but it is clear that Barnes learned to hide it just as well as his identity._

_Barnes grew up conforming to America social standards at seemingly every turn. His marks were top-notch in school and his athletic capabilities made him popular among his classmates. At home, Barnes was a devoted son and brother. "He helped out his dad every day after school." Said Ruth Scoville, former neighbor. "And he walked his sisters to and from school, everywhere really if he could help it. He never was anything but polite when it came to his mother." She added with great fondness. Barnes' devotion to his family went as far as seeking to drop out several times during the Depression to help his family make ends meet. His parents not only insisted he stay in school, but pushed him to continue his education afterwards. At age seventeen, Barnes graduated high school and enrolled at Yeshiva University, the oldest university in the United States to combine Jewish scholarship with various other studies, ranging from the liberal arts to law. Barnes studied business and graduated with a two-year degree in 1935. That autumn, he came under the employment of a non-profit organization,_ The New York Hunger Society,  _which was very much in need of men like Barnes who could help them navigate the unique and tricky business practices of being a charity organization._

_Bucky Barnes was a faithful believer in God, a high school and college graduate, well-employed, a devoted son and brother, and a beloved member of his community. He conformed to nearly every aspect of what America thought that perfect young man should be. Except for one glaring inconsistency: Steve Rogers aka Captain America. We all know and love Cap, but before WWII, he was nothing but a tumor in the eyes of many people. Rogers was indeed a faithful believer in God, and a high school graduate, but his enrollment in art school rather than a vocational program, a more sensible field of study, or direct path into the work force was seen as impractical and even lazy. Rogers, unlike Barnes, jumped from job to job, and by 1940, he had no family to be devoted to. To make matters worse, Rogers was notoriously sickly and was offered money by eugenics activists more than once to be sterilized, and he was a fiery scrapper to boot prone to alleyway brawls with those he thought of as bullies. All this led to Rogers being seen as the stone in Barnes' pocket, so to speak._

_This shows how selfless and loyal of an individual Barnes was, but also how well he understood the plight of those who could not conform to American standards as well as himself. His sympathy likely played a huge role in his close attachment to Rogers._

_"Bucky Barnes could have easily ended up a Steve Rogers. Jewish and an immigrant in a very, very xenophobic and very, very antisemitic time, if he hadn't been so good as adapting, he and Rogers could have been mirror images. Rogers, unfortunately, could not so easily mold himself into what society wanted--his various illnesses prevented him from doing so just as much as his principles did. In Rogers, I think Barnes saw his 'could have been' and took pity." - Emily Wyatt, World War II historian (1987)_

_Others hold a similar, though still rather different view on the matter, like Howling Commando enthusiast and writer of the 1973 comic series_ The Howlies _, Jack Essman:_

_"It would be a crime to say Bucky and Cap's friendship was based on pity. But I'd be lying if I said it didn't have some degree of envy lacing it. Bucky always had to conform to survive because otherwise he wouldn't have a chance. He was Jewish and a 'you know'*, or would have been if his family didn't hide it so well. Cap was at least American-born and had the blue eyes and blond hair going for him. I feel Bucky envied Cap for being able to get away with not conforming."_

_Regardless of point of view, Barnes and Rogers had inherently different lots in life, and though their destination was the same, the roads they each took were very different._

_Barnes was conscripted in a peace time draft a year prior to Pearl Harbor. Steve Rogers went to enlist shortly afterwards so the close friends could serve together. He was rejected on the grounds of his various health concerns. From this point onwards, we all know the story. The good Captain continued trying to enlist until May 1942, when Dr. Erksine finally enlisted him as test subject for the SSR. Meanwhile, Barnes was shipped off to Europe where he would meet his friend once again as his liberator This period of separation between the two friends is typically only discussed from Rogers' side of things. After all, the USO tours were far more pleasant than the bloody war taking place on the other side of the Atlantic._

_Barnes did not live to give an interview or statement on his experiences during that period, or any length of time during the war, which accounts for the brevity of this chapter. What we know of his service comes from the first hand accounts of other men of the 107th, the Howling Commandos, and Agent Peggy Carter. From what we have been given, we can come to the conclusion it was absolutely hellish. Bucky Barnes conformed to every American ideal he could to not only survive, but thrive, and his reward was having a gun shoved in his hands and being told to march into Hell. America never gave their so-called bestfriend any choice but to their puppet, their toy. Perhaps that is why we have chosen to immortalize a war hero as a child's teddy bear._

Bucky fought the urge to hurl the Starkpad against the nearest wall. It took all his will to put it down and walk away without cursing loudly, driving his fist through a wall, or kicking the coffee table in frustration. With the Starkpad safely out of his hands, Bucky began to pace the length of the living room as he seethed through his mixed contemplations of murder, car-keying, and strongly worded letters. It took twenty minutes for him to calm down enough to call Natalia. 

"How's the reading go?" She greeted him. 

"I'm on the verge of tracking the author of this book like a dog and force feeding him his own manuscript." Bucky growled. 

"You wouldn't have to track him down like a dog. I can Google him right now. What's his name?" She asked, utterly serene. It was both aggravating and soothing because on one hand, what angry person wanted the person they were venting to to be calm? On the other, a perfectly calm Natalia could at times be indicative of assassination plots in the works. 

"Alan Winslow." Bucky replied. Natalia let out an understanding, "Oh."

"Yeah, the intern warned me that maybe that book wouldn't be right for you, but I wasn't prepared to coddle you through this, so I bought it anyways. Are you seriously on the brink of donning the old leathers? Rogers would kill me if you are." 

Bucky took two deep, calming breaths. "No, no..I'm not _that_ bad. I'm pissed as all Hell, but only enough to key a car maybe." He said. 

"Wow, the intern wasn't exaggerating when he said that the self-righteous tone of the book might set you off." Natalia remarked. 

"I feel like an idiot for not having noticed in the earlier chapters. I guess it being about me put it all in better perspective." Bucky's anger flared again. "But that's not even the worst part. I'll be the first to admit the draft was and always will suck, but it made me into this... _Stepford perso_ n or something. It made me out as a _ball of clay_ since the start who either pitied or envied my best friend because he was a nonconformist. It even attacked _Buckybear_. It attacked a _child's toy._ " His voice quavered, and looking down, he saw his flesh hand was trembling. Bucky forced himself to take a seat at the kitchen island. 

"Should I get Steve? I don't think he'd be too bothered to ditch his meeting with Stark." Asked Natalia, probably sensing his distress. 

"I don't know." Bucky swallowed hard. "Sam." He whispered. "I think this is one for Sam." 

"I'll call him. You just sit tight for a minute and then I'll be right back on the phone with you to keep you company until he gets there. Just one minute." Natalia assured him softly. 

"Okay?" She asked. 

"Okay." Bucky confirmed quietly. The phone beeped as she hang up, leaving Bucky all alone and shaking violently on a stool at the kitchen island.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * 'you knows' was a common phrase used in the US to describe Romanian Immigrants
> 
> Thank you for reading! Commentary is always welcome, as I've said time and time again, and so are kudos! I mean, I would have to be crazy to turn down comments and kudos
> 
> If you're interested in more fanfiction by me, I also write ASOIAF, Game of Thrones, and Les Mis fanfiction. 
> 
> If you're interested in original work, I have a series where I post snippets of material from the novel I am working on. You might as well get a taste of what keeps me from updating for so long sometimes, haha. (No, but seriously, sorry for taking so long with updates.)
> 
> I'd really appreciate you guys checking out my other stuff, but thank you still for your continuous support of this work!


	5. Inheritance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I Own Nothing. All rights belong to Marvel Comics.

Sam's tentative knock at the front door came twenty minutes after Bucky first called Natalia. "He's here." Bucky informed Natalia as he approached the door. "Thanks, Nat." He whispered as he unlocked the door. "No problem. Feel better, bye." Bucky put his phone away as Sam slipped through the door and gave him a careful once-over. 

"Natasha said one of those biographies set you off. How are you feeling right now?" Asked Sam. 

Bucky could only shrug helplessly. "I have no idea. I just...come read this and tell me it pisses you off, too." Said Bucky, gesturing for Sam to follow him into the living room. The chapter was a quick read. When Sam was done, he looked totally calm, which both irritated and scared Bucky to no end. Was he overreacting? Or was Sam just not getting it? No, Sam was too smart and insightful not to see a problem where there was one. Bucky had to be overreacting then. That was it. He was overreacting.  _Stupid,_ Bucky thought.  _Why did you have to get so worked up over a stupid book? It's just words, it's just one guy's stupid opinion. Why did you have to get so worked u--_

"Bucky," Sam's calm voice cut in. Bucky looked up from his lap to see Sam looking at him with concern and sympathy. "Buck, it's alright. I can see why you're upset. This guy clearly used you to promote his own views on the draft and American society." He assured.

"He made me out to be a hunk of clay." Bucky whispered numbly. 

"He clearly didn't do his research, because no one who ever knew you would say you were so malleable." 

"Sam, you didn't know me before. And the only person you know who did is Steve and my sister Andrea. They're pretty biased parties." 

"You know who you were, who you are." Sam pointed out. 

"I can hardly remember who I was, Sam." Bucky protested. "I can't  _remember_ whether or not what that guy said is accurate. I couldn't even remember being Romanian!" 

Sam slowly reached out and put a firm, reassuring hand on Bucky's shoulder. "Deep breaths, man. You're getting worked up again." He said gently. Bucky took a deep breath as instructed and let it out slowly, and then again, and then again, until some of his anxiety ebbed away. Not all of it, but enough to speak again. 

"Natalia said we can Google him and find his address." Said Bucky. 

Sam smiled thinly at him. "We can't murder a guy just for being an insensitive ass." 

"I was thinking more along the lines of keying his car, toilet papering his house, or, I don't know, we'll Google ideas after we Google his address." Bucky grumbled. 

Sam laughed and said, "Maybe after we're done calming you down. Then if you're still up for it, we can do that and pick Peter up along the way." Bucky managed a smile, though it was short-lived as Sam grew serious again the next minute. "Seriously, Buck, all you need to know to be sure this guy is full of bull is weigh the evidence. That entire chapter is opinion. There's no evidence for his interpretation at all. My high school English teacher Mrs. Finster would have handed him his ass on a platter if he handed in this garbage in her class. But look at all the things you doremember, all the evidence in favor of you being just as stubborn and nonconformist as that little punk you called a friend. Yours and Steve's entire friendship screams 'We don't give a fuck about society's opinion'!" 

"You really think so?" Asked Bucky. 

"I  _know_ so." 

* * *

"Bucky?" 

"Yeah, Steve?" 

"Why does Peter's instagram have a picture of you and Sam posing with a car with the words 'douche canoe' keyed onto its side?" 

"..." 

"You could have invited me along, jerk."

* * *

  _The Unwilling Heroes_ was swiftly deleted from his library after revenge was achieved and the next day Bucky moved on to the next book in his arsenal, the title of which made him choke on his own tongue:  _Bucky Barnes' Son._ Bucky scrambled to open up the file and begin reading, all the while hoping against hope that it was one of those out-of-context titles meant to catch readers' eyes rather than really indicate the contents of the book. 

_Foreword_

_In 1984, Senator Proctor's widow Rebecca Proctor nee Barnes passed away of breast cancer. Rebecca Proctor had lived a long, fulfilling life and accepted her fate with the grace she was renowned for. Two months before her death, Proctor made the responsible decision to revise her will one last time. This decision, however, would give way to a six year legal battle between her sisters' children and her brother's so-called illegitimate son. The Proctor Estate legal battle would become infamous for its twists and turns, as well as the eventual use of DNA testing to resolve it in 1991._

_As a journalist, I found myself reporting on the scandal more than once in the years between 1984 and 1990. I often thought to myself that the whole affair resembled a soap-opera. Like a soap-opera, the story seemed convoluted and my articles on the subject were often equally messy. My editor was not very happy with me. The same could be said by many other reporters on the story, which may account for the sparse coverage. The situation was difficult to convey to the general public at every stage. Dashawn Carter's collective, well-researched account is a Godsend. Had he not been in grade school when the affair was at its height, Carter might have won a Pulitzer for his coverage._

_-E. J. Wong_

_Chapter 1: The Proctor Fortune_

_In 1954, Rebecca Barnes, sister of famous war hero Bucky Barnes, married attorney-at-law Nelson Proctor. Barnes had been working as a nurse at Bellevue Hospital Center, the hospital Proctor's cousin was being treated at for cancer of the mouth in 1952, when she met her future husband. Proctor and Barnes began dating after two months of flirting in the halls before and after Proctor paid his cousin a weekly visit. "I never saw Rebecca in a better mood than on those Sunday afternoons when Nelson would visit." Said Barnes' coworker and close friend Ethel James in her speech at the couple's wedding.  The couple were very happy throughout the remainder of '52 and the entirety of '53. It was thus no surprise when Proctor converted to Judaism in the February of 1953 and asked George Barnes for his daughter's hand in marriage that July. Proctor received permission but did not carry out his proposal until the spring of '54 for unknown reasons. It is speculated that he was facing financial difficulties during that time, having been cut off by his affluent, Protestant family when he converted. The acquisition of a position at Stein, Farmer, & Campbell in the march of 1954 is believed to have stabilized his situation enough for him to feel comfortable proposing. _

_"Rebecca was usually very solemn and serious. When she was a teenager, she was very chipper, but after Bucky and Stevie died, the media hounded her for awhile about them both, more so than they ever did me or Andrea. They were so ruthless sometimes. She became very closed off, guarded...I knew she loved Nelson because of how freely she smiled and laughed around him. She didn't choose her words so carefully. She wasn't afraid to be misunderstood by Nelson, because Nelson could read her like an open book." Georgette Barnes said to her sister's biographer Leila Taylor in 1985. "Rebecca's wedding day was the happiest I'd seen her since...well, since Bucky and Stevie were alive. That graveness about her was gone and my sunshine older sister was back. She danced all night long with Nelson and Papa. Even when her heels started to hurt her feet, she just took them off, handed them to Andrea, and kept dancing with Nelson." Georgette recalled fondly._

_The Proctors lived in New York city for the first three years of their marriage until better job opportunities in Albany lured the couple north. While her husband worked for a high power law firm, Rebecca juggled their two young children and several community engagements. Mrs. Proctor's love of charity and committees became as well known in Albany as her relation to Captain America's sidekick, Bucky Barnes. In 1960, Nelson Proctor was encouraged to run for a seat on the city council and won, kicking off his rocky political career. Proctor's popularity was high throughout his time on the council and he was reelected by a landslide. This was in no small part thanks to Rebecca's charitable nature and involvement with the community at large. She had her fingers right to the pulse of the city and was able to communicate its needs to her husband. Despite two popular terms on the council, however, Nelson's bid for Mayor proved fruitless due to a smear campaign carried out by his opponent, Thomas Ward, accusing Rebecca Proctor of being a communist. Rebecca's 1951 interview with historian David Fannigan on her family's Romanian origins was presented to the public as evidence. This accusation led to a nosedive in popularity for Nelson and Rebecca Proctor's popularity during the former's campaign.  
_

_"It was like being back in Romania for her." Reported Georgette in the her sister's 1986 biography. "Not since Romania had my sister felt so attacked, and she said so herself. Sometimes when I'd phone her and we'd talk about what people were saying about her and Nelson, I got the impression she was just waiting for the day she and her family came home to find their home trashed and the words 'communist' and 'Jew' painted all over the walls."_

_Conscious of her husband's desire to make a difference in the city, Rebecca stepped out of the spotlight and became a virtual cardboard cutout during her husband's next campaign. She downplayed her Jewish faith as well, and distanced herself from socialism to prevent further accusations of communist sympathies. Her humility was rewarded by Proctor's victory. Rebecca proceeded to reengage society and became beloved by the citizens of Albany for her philanthropy once again. Her popularity encouraged Proctor to run for Senator when his term as Mayor ended. Rebecca's happiness at this development was noted by several friends, including Thomas Ward's widow Patricia Ward: "Rebecca was very proud of herself and her husband. You could see it on her face when he announced his intention to run for Senator. In her eyes, they were a team. When one of them won, they both won."_

_In 1974, Nelson Proctor was voted the Democratic Senator of the State of New York. He served one full term, during which time he maintained a high approval rating. The defining moment of his term was his 1975 speech declaring the Vietnam War a senseless waste of life and calling for its end before the US suffered a humiliating defeat. This was two weeks prior to the Fall of Saigon. The truth spoken in his speech made Proctor the poster boy of "I told you so" during his time in office, which made him exceedingly popular with the young people of New York. (It should be noted that today, it is debated how much of the statement was true belief and how much was well-timed political savvy.) However, despite the odds being in his favor, Proctor declined reelection at his wife's insistence. Half way through his term in the Senate, Proctor had been diagnosed with heart disease and Rebecca had worried endlessly over his health. After his term ended, Proctor retired from politics and moved back to New York City with his wife._

_Nelson Proctor suffered a stroke in 1980 and lived the remainder of his life paralyzed on one side and in the care of his beloved Rebecca. With his death in 1981, he left his wife the sole inheritor of all his possessions, which included over one million dollars in bank bonds and stocks, three homes along the east coast, and four cars. Rebecca was diagnosed with breast cancer two months before her husband's death, but hid her state from him so he could go peacefully according to friends and family. Knowing her own death was approaching, Rebecca spent the last years of her life revising her will over and over again._

_Nelson and Rebecca had only two children, Jeremy and Nora. Jeremy had died in a car accident at age 19 in 1974 and Nora fell in love with a Communist sympathizer in college before her father began his campaign for Senator. She was disowned upon eloping in order to avoid a repeat of the disaster that was her father's first campaign for mayor. With one child buried and another estranged, Rebecca was forced to divide her wealth among her sisters' children, as well as various charitable organizations, a task she found very difficult according to friends. "One day, all the children got equal shares. The next, the money was divided up based on who needed it the most. And the day after that, none of the children got anything and everything went to the charities." Reported Rebecca's long time friend Louise Labelle following her friend's passing._

_Rebecca Proctor passed away on July 18th, 1984 and was buried beside her husband and son in Washington Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York City on July 22nd. Her will was read to her six nieces and nephews the next day by her attorney, and the will was set to be executed by Louise Labelle in the following weeks. Rebecca had resolved to give over half of her fortune to charity, leaving her nieces and nephews approximately two hundred fifty thousand dollars each. The houses and cars were to be sold and the profits set aside for a trust fund for Rebecca's various great-nieces and great-nephews. The Levi and Nizzola siblings did not contest the will's contents. All seemed settled._

_Over night, the situation changed drastically. On July 26th, 1984, a man by the name of Harry Ponzi presented himself to Rebecca Proctor's lawyer Thompson and Labelle a week after Proctor's death. He identified himself as three things: a New York City native, a former factory foreman, and Bucky Barnes' illegitimate son. Labelle and Thompson were shocked and asked for proof. Ponzi confessed he only had his mother's word, his eerie resemblance to the Howling Commando, and a picture of Barnes and his mother from 1939, which he presented to Labelle and Thompson at that first meeting._

 Bucky looked at the black and white picture on the Starkpad screen with bewilderment. In the picture, a twenty-three year old him had an arm wrapped around the waist of a girl with a round face and curly black hair. They were both dressed to the nines as they stood next to the entrance to a favorite dance hall of his back in the day. Bucky only vaguely recalled the girl. Her name was Janet Ponzi, and he'd dated her alright, but he was damn sure he didn't knock her up. He never got past necking with the girl!...Or at least he _thought_ they'd never gotten past necking. Who knew what he was forgetting? Bucky groaned. How pathetic would it be to have a kid and not even remember conceiving them. _Talk about missing the best part..._ He thought sardonically. 

"What are you reading now?" Steve asked from his end of the couch. Bucky started a little, having been so engrossed in what he was reading that he'd forgotten Steve was in room still, reading one those  _Harry Potter_ books Sam bought him for Christmas. Something about a goblet and dragons and some guy named Diggory that Bucky knew just from the way Steve described him was going to be dead by the end of the book. Not that he'd told Steve that. 

"Um...it's..." Bucky's brain scrambled for a good lie. "It's another book about the Howling Commandos. Yeah, the author is, uh, confusing us with our comic book counterparts again. We seriously need to get this notion that it was all fun and games out there out of people's heads. Maybe write our own comic." Steve didn't look altogether convinced, but still agreed and said he'd break out his art supplies as soon as Bucky turned out a script.

* * *

The foreword hadn't lied. Bucky plowed through the first half of the book in one day and it proved before its first chapter was even two-thirds finished that the affair was just the melodrama Wong remembered it to be. 

The first chapter had concluded with the varied reactions of the Levi and Nizzola siblings to the sudden appearance of their so-called long lost cousin. Georgette's eldest daughter Deborah had been the first to call bullshit, having inherited none of her mother's trusting nature. Her brother Jack and cousin Teresa backed her up. Deborah and Jack's sister Jane, having inherited  _all_ of her mother's trusting nature, eagerly welcomed Ponzi into the family. Teresa's older brothers Wesley and Kelly, as characteristic of the twins, dug their heels into the ground, refusing to believe nor disbelieve Ponzi's claim until a proper investigation was carried out. Kelly personally hired a private detective friend, Gordon Wayne, to carry out the investigation. 

Deborah had made it very clear in an email that she had no wish to put herself, her children, or grandchildren within ten miles of Bucky. Jack had died of a heart attack in 2001. Jane lived in a retirement village in Florida and couldn't be bothered to make the trip north. Wesley was on the same page as Deborah. Kelly  _said_ he'd like to meet Bucky according to Andrea but still hadn't bothered with so much as an email. and Teresa had been in and out of the hospitals of Buffalo since 2012 thanks to her diabetes. No one had any clue where Nora was. Bucky had thus never met any of his nieces or nephews. The book made him sort of grateful for that fact. 

The second chapter picked up with how the family coped with Ponzi's existence until Wayne finished his investigation. Deborah apparently went to great lengths to keep everything under wraps with Louise Labelle's assistance. She quickly became a thorn in her siblings' and cousins' sides, as she hovered over each of them out of fear one of them would reveal the situation to the public. Her antics included inserting herself into all aspects of their personal lives, calling constantly, and paying impromptu to visits just to remind them to keep their mouths shut. The worst incident reportedly involved her asking Teresa to stop being friends with certain women because she felt they were too gossipy to be trusted. The word "loose" reared its ugly head multiple times during that argument. Perhaps because of her hovering, Kelly allowed his detective friend Wayne to tell the press about the Ponzi controversy six weeks following Proctor's death "in order to gain the media's assistance in resolving the matter." The entire family was furious, but no more than Deborah, whose first statement to the small amount of media covering the scandal read, _"I honestly have no idea what my cousin was thinking. I mean honestly, who does he think he is? This isn't just his business that he's just put out for all the world to see. When Ponzi is revealed as a fraud, he'll be very embarrassed. He should be already, honestly. Who hires a private investigator who needs the media to do his job for him?"_

Ponzi retaliated to this statement by doing several interviews with the press along with his mother Janet, telling their story. 

 _"I was nineteen in the summer of 1939. James was twenty-three, which I thought was really exciting. I'd never gone out with someone over twenty before. I don't think James had gone out with someone so much younger than him either." Said Janet Ross nee Ponzi to_ Daily Bugle  _journalist J. J. Jameson in her debut interview. Jameson, an outspoken fan of Bucky Barnes, of course asked Ross for proof of a relationship between herself and Barnes immediately. Ross presented Jameson with the same photograph her son had shown Labelle and Thompson. It is worthy to note that had Ponzi been claiming to be Steve Rogers' son, or Howard Stark's son, or any powerful, well known dead man's son for that matter, Jameson would have taken that photo of Janet and that man as "proof" and submitted the story to his editor without delay. However, Jameson harbored a soft spot for Bucky Barnes and was unwilling to take Ross' photo at face value. Jameson's first interview with Ross and Ponzi thus went unpublished and_ Daily Bugle  _editor-and-chief Garfield Morrison was forced to put Joseph Robertson on the story, as Jameson refused. But_ _Jameson did not shy away from the Ponzi-Barnes affair, though that is a story for later._

_Robertson's interview with Ponzi and Ross was published in October 1984, along with Ross' incriminating photograph._

_"James Barnes and my mother dated the summer of '39. I was born in the early spring of 1940. Now, what does that tell you?" Ponzi asked Robertson. Ross, as noted by Robertson, flushed at her son's words. "We were young." She stated simply._

_"Why didn't you ever approach Barnes or his family about this?"  Robertson inquired._

_"When I realized I was pregnant, James and I had gone our separate ways already, and I was at school up north, in Vermont. I mailed my parents, saying I was coming back to New York, the reason why, and that I would tell James in person when I got there. I was one foot off the bus when my parents grabbed me, shoved me into my uncle's car, and drove me to my grandmother's in Maryland. I gave birth to Harry there, and my parents didn't let me come back to New York until he was one year old. By the time I got back, James was pretty serious with a girl from what I heard around and I couldn't bring myself to say anything. Then he went to war and got all famous...I figured people would think I was lying." Ross explained._

_Robertson stated in his article how contradictory that statement was to the situation at hand. "Why now then?"  He asked Ross and Ponzi._

_Ponzi confessed that his stepping forward had everything to do with money. "Might as well come out and say it. I was laid off earlier this year and my family has been struggling. We need a share of that inheritance money to keep us afloat until I can find work." Robertson reacted to this statement at the time of the interview with apparent understanding of the Ponzi family's situation. However, in the actual article, Robertson showed his agreement with his colleague Jameson that Ponzi and Ross' story seemed fishy._

_"Ponzi stated that his stepping forward was indeed only for his supposed aunt's wealth. Ponzi was laid off from his position as a factory foreman in January and his family has been struggling since. Ponzi intends to use the inheritance to keep his family 'afloat' until he finds a new job. It should be noted, however, that not even a family of five such as Ponzi's merely floats on an inheritance of 214,000 plus dollars." - Joseph Robertson,_ Daily Bugle,  _October 3, 1984._

Throughout the next several chapters, _The Daily Bugle_  maintained its dubious position and was always there to tear down Ponzi and Ross' stories. For once, the paper's antagonistic nature actually managed to endear Bucky, who'd previously helped Peter send the editor a glitter bomb in the mail. 

"I think we should start reading the Daily Bugle again." Bucky remarked. Steve looked up with surprise from the stove. 

"Did they print a retraction on the 'Spiderman & Black Cat = modern day Bonnie & Clyde' theory of theirs?" Bucky shook his head. 

"Then why?" Asked Steve. 

"They did some good reporting back in the day." 

"What did you read?" 

"Huh?" 

"What did you read?" Steve pressed. His brow was furrowed and he'd crossed his arms over his chest: Steve's go-to "I'm not backing down" face. 

 _Crap,_ Bucky thought among several other expletives. He didn't dare slip the Starkpad into his bathrobe pocket. 

"Nothing." Bucky answered lamely. 

"Buck." Steve warned. 

"Honestly." 

"You acted weird all day yesterday and this morning too. You just said you wanted to get a subscription to  _The Daily Bugle._ The only explanation is you're reading something upsetting." 

"Aren't you supposed to respect my privacy?" 

That gave Steve pause. But only a pause. "Bucky, please just tell me. You shouldn't deal with anything that makes you really angry or upset alone." He pleaded. 

Bucky heaved a sigh, bracing himself, and handed over the Starkpad. Steve took one look at the screen and went bug-eyed. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *This chapter has been edited a lot. 3/19/15 12:45 am.  
> Thanks for reading! And, just so that way I can say I tried, here's some reverse psychology for ya. Do not comment or kudos this chapter, guys. Don't. You don't wanna do that at all. Nah, totally. Never gonna happen. Nuh-huh.
> 
> But seriously, thank you to everyone for reading, leaving kudos, and leaving comments! I really appreciate it.  
> If you're interested in more fanfiction by me, I also write ASOIAF, Game of Thrones, and Les Mis fanfiction. 
> 
> If you're interested in original work, I have a series where I post snippets of material from the novel I am working on. You might as well get a taste of what keeps me from updating for so long sometimes, haha. (No, but seriously, sorry for taking so long with updates.)
> 
> I'd really appreciate you guys checking out my other stuff, but thank you still for your continuous support of this work!


	6. Opponents & Skeptics

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I own nothing.

"I'm Googling it."  
"Steve, no."  
"Bucky, I'm Googling it."  
"Don't!" Bucky pleaded

"Why not?" Asked Steve, eyes a bit wild. "Bucky, you could have a son!" 

Bucky's gaze fell to his dingy socks. "I...I'm afraid, okay?" He confessed. Steve remained silent, but glancing up, Bucky saw his anxious eyes had softened. "If this Ponzi guy is the real deal..." Bucky continued quietly. "If he's the real deal, there's a whole new list of important things I missed out on. The deaths of all my loved ones, my sisters' weddings, so many holidays and graduations and births; as if missing those things wasn't bad enough. To miss out on my son's entire life? Missing out on grand-kids and great-grand-kids?" Bucky barked a sardonic laugh. "Can things get any worse!?" 

"So this is a guilt thing?" Steve ventured hesitantly. Bucky gave a single solemn nod. 

"I'm sorry, Buck." 

"It's alright." Rubbing the back of his neck, Bucky added, "You can look it up if you want. Just don't tell me. I want to see the rest of this story play out in the book. I need more than a 'yes' or a 'no'." 

"I won't look it up. There won't be any accidental spoilers at the breakfast table, I promise." Said Steve with a hint of humor. However, he quickly sobered again. He looked like he wanted to say something more but didn't think it would be a good idea.

"What is it?" 

"Do," Steve cleared his throat. "Do you think he could have actually been your son?" 

Bucky couldn't quite smother his cringe. "Fingers crossed he's not." He admitted. 

"So...what's the story so far? I only really saw the title and I freaked out a little." 

Bucky bit his tongue but couldn't put the brake on rolling his eyes.  _A little_ , he thought sarcastically. 

"It all started with my sister Becca." Bucky explained that Rebecca's will left their nieces and nephews a ton of money and how Harry Ponzi stepped forward as his son to get a share of the money for his own family.

"That sounds suspicious." Steve commented, his mouth forming a hard, grim line.

"Gigi's daughter Deborah thought so too. She, her brother Jack, and their cousin Teresa pitched a fit and demanded an investigation. Teresa's brother Kelly had a friend of his do the job, but Deb ended up pissing Kelly off so much he let his detective friend go to the press. Things only got worse from there. Ponzi and his mom did a circuit with the press telling their story, how me and her dated and I apparently got her in trouble. There was this short chapter summing up Ponzi's past according to those interviews he did and Kelly's detective's findings. Born in Maryland, raised in Brooklyn and then in Queens when his mom got married; he went straight to work in a factory after high school and became a foreman when he was thirty. He married his high school sweetheart and had three kids. He got laid off in early 1984, which is why he needed the inheritance so badly." 

"You sound like you don't believe that last part." Steve observed. 

"Yeah." Bucky admitted in a sigh. "But mostly because of what he did in the chapter after that. For the first half of 1985, the media was just gobbling up the story because of the loose Captain America connection and because a new Captain America movie had come out that February where the Bucky character was pretty awesome. Lots of fans were interested in the story." 

"What did Ponzi do? More interviews?" 

"I wish. He leveraged the media coverage into a book deal. He managed to turn one out by the end of the year, even after Deborah and Jack sued him. They didn't want him making any money of the Barnes name until he could somehow prove he was my son. A judge said, while it was true Ponzi couldn't prove it, the Levi siblings could not  _dis_ _prove_  it, and seeing as how Ponzi at least had the photograph of me and his mom on his side, he could publish as many books as he wanted." 

Steve cringed. "I'm guessing Deborah didn't take that well." 

Bucky snorted. "She was so pissed she reconciled with Kelly, who was just as angry, just so they could go in on a big time private detective together. They both sank thousands into his guy, but both said to reporters that it'd all be worth it when Ponzi was proven a fake and they got their fair share of the inheritance." 

"You mean they hadn't gotten any of the money by then?" 

"Not a cent. Becca's friend Louise Labelle and her lawyer gave the designated money to charity, but all the money set aside for Georgette and Andrea's kids stayed firmly in a bank until the issue was resolved, that way they would only have to divide up the money once, whether it be six ways or seven." 

Steve stayed silent for a moment before carefully inquiring, "Have you talked to Andrea about this?" Bucky hesitated to answer. 

He'd been wrestling with himself for hours, all through yesterday and this morning, over whether or not to call his sister and just ask how everything turned out, or to at least get her take on the whole situation when it was going on. But he was too scared of what she might say. What she might confirm as the truth, and what she might declare a complete and utter falsehood. Bucky wanted to avoid his little sister for the same reason he avoided Google, only it was a hundred times harder because he and the search engine hadn't nursed from the same teat. 

"No, I haven't. But there's a quote from Gigi in there, as well as Stark." Bucky managed to reply with an even voice. 

Steve looked torn between pleasantly surprised and wary. "Howard said something about it?" 

Bucky smiled, picked up the Starkpad, found the quotes by his sister and Stark, and handed the tablet back to Steve. "Read it yourself." 

 _"I never dreamed of something like this. Becca would probably box my ear for saying this, but I hope Harry Ponzi is everything he says he is."  Said Georgette Levi nee Barnes in a brief interview with Robertson from_ The Daily Bugle  _in November 1984. Georgette's health began to decline that December and continued to deteriorate through 1985. Jack and Jane Levi took turns caring for their mother throughout her last year of life, however by November 6th, 1985, they could no longer suit her needs and transferred Georgette into the custody of Shady Pines Nursing Village, Richmond, Virginia. Georgette Barnes finally passed away on April 3rd, 1986, three days after her sixty-third birthday. Thus, the middle Barnes sister's first comment on the subject of her possible nephew was also her last and only._

 _Similarly, Howard Stark, former SSR colleague of Bucky Barnes, was incredibly busy throughout the last years of Cold War. He could only be reached for comment on the subject once by_ The New York Times _after Ponzi's 1984 biography became a bestseller. "No one can blame me for not having the faintest idea what the hell is going on with this mess. I'm a busy man and I can't be bothered to familiarize myself with every bit of tabloid gossip. Barnes having a son? I can only hope this man, Ponzi, isn't a fraud. The Barnes' family doesn't deserve such an evil. If he's real, I hope Ponzi enjoys his new family, and that the girls' kids enjoy him as well. If he's fake...well, he better hope Peg doesn't get her hands on him." Following this, Stark lived largely outside of the public eye, having passed that torch along to his young son Tony and apparently largely due to several confidential government security contracts that greatly restricted his contact with the press._

"Damn." Steve breathed. It wasn't the statements, so much as the brevity that got him. Shy, sweet, trusting Gigi...to think of her taken so quickly that she hardly was able to get two sentences in on a scandal that embroiled her family for years. It was tough enough to imagine Becca--Becca who acted like the year between them in age was as good as a decade sometimes, Becca who liked to act like a grown up but would break down in fits of giggles at the drop of a hat, Becca who was always on Sarah Rogers' heels, asking about her job at the hospital and Ireland and Catholicism or anything she thought her second mother might have insight on, Becca who wrote Steve as religiously during the war as she did Bucky--it was tough to imagine that it was a girl who might as well have been his sister's death that set off the chain of events Bucky and _Bucky Barnes' Son_  described. Georgette's ultimate fate made Steve feel like he was watching the wreckage of a sinking ship drift by.

Hearing Howard's somewhat brusque reply hurt too. He and Bucky used to be pals, and yet in the end, Howard became so consumed by his government contracts and a damn arms race that he couldn't be bothered to spare more than a few sentences and a half-joke. Steve knew that the Howard he knew was far different from the father Tony knew, but that short paragraph made it clear that distance was greater than he'd previously imagined. He hoped that Howard had cared more about the whole mess more than his near silence let on. 

"Peggy was also asked to comment, and so were Gabe, Dum Dum, and Morita." Bucky cracked a small smile. "Peggy and Dum Dum refused to comment, though a rumor apparently floated around about her sending Ponzi a death threat saying that if he was lying he'd have to answer directly to her. Gabe only made one comment about being dubious of the whole situation. Jim..." Bucky grinned. "Morita was really plain about it all. Just scroll down a few times and start reading after the picture of Jim with his grandson in his lap." He instructed Steve. 

Steve did as he was told, but spared a moment to examine the aforementioned picture. The picture was explosive with color thanks to Morita's poor fashion sense which his daughter must have inherited by the looks of her son on Morita's lap, though that could just as easily been explained by the picture being taken in the 80s. Steve hadn't heard too many good things about 80s fashion. Despite their state of dress, the gray-haired grandfather and jolly toddler were both smiling widely at the camera. 

 _Jim Morita with his youngest grandson, Justin Dugan. Taken July 4, 1984 in Tampa, Florida by Julie Dugan nee Morita,_ the caption read. 

Steve smiled fondly at the picture for a few seconds more before moving on to read the paragraph below. 

 _James "Jim" Morita was notable for three things prior to 1985: his time as a Howling Commando, his civil rights activism, and his daughter Julie's interracial marriage with fellow Commando Timothy Dugan and Agent Peggy Carter's son, Dennis "The Menace" Dugan. After 1985, Morita became notable for a fourth attribute: his firm belief that Ponzi and his mother were either severely mistaken or outright liars. He made this belief public on December 3, 1985 while doing a circuit of interviews with the media promoting his autobiography,_ What Wolves We Were _. On the day in question, Morita was interviewed by a young reporter by the name of Sarah Burke. Burke had been given a list of questions by her editor to ask Morita and was explicitly ordered not to divert her attentions from Morita's book. However, being young and impertinent, Burke ended the interview with an unauthorized question that served her own personal interests rather than those of_ The Philadelphia Gazette. 

 _"Mr. Morita, before you go, there's been a lot of talk this past year about Harry Ponzi and his claims of being Howling Commando Bucky Barnes' son. What do you think of his claims?"_   _Burke inquired. Morita had replied very curtly, "I don't believe it in the least. He's either a liar or his mother is mistaken." Burke was overjoyed by this response and zealously included it in her final draft of the article written on that day's interview. Her editor, rather than angry with her deliberate disobedience, was equally delighted. Within a week, countless papers splashed the name Morita across their front pages._

 _Despite his agent's insistence, Morita would not retract this statement nor avoid making it again on several separate occasions. Eventually, Morita agreed to a TV interview with talk show host Larry King on the subject. The entirety of the interaction was supposedly intended to focus on_ What Wolves We Were _and was advertised as such_ , _but by the end of the broadcast, King had questioned Morita no less than ten times on the subject of Ponzi and Barnes. The interview was witnessed by over two million viewers and further interest in the story exploded. More over, Ponzi began to lose favor with the public._

_Prior to Morita's statements, an overwhelming percentage of the populous believed Ponzi's claims. Many reporters noted that the inheritance money made it more difficult to take the Levi and Nizzola siblings' side. There was a very obvious conflict of interest. The same conflict existed with Ponzi; but Ponzi possessed the photograph of his mother and Barnes as well as a resemblance to Barnes. After Morita's statements, Ponzi's supporters began to dwindle. Morita was a very trustworthy figure in the public's mind and had actually known Sergeant Barnes. His firm belief that Ponzi was not Bucky Barnes' son garnered more public support for the Levi and Nizzola siblings and scorn towards Ponzi and his mother Janet Ross rather easily._

_Ponzi quickly jumped to his own defense, proclaiming that Morita's statements were a publicity stunt. He said as much to several reporters and for the first week of February 1986, the defectors returned to Ponzi's side. However, Morita and his agent quickly renounced this claim. "Mr. Morita's autobiography has actually declined in sales since he made his feelings about Mr. Ponzi and his mother public. People seem to have forgotten he even had one out in the first place." Morita's agent lamented to Robertson of_ The Daily Bugle  _on February 9, 1986. With this one statement, Ponzi lost the support of over half of the major newspapers and news networks which had previously defended his claims._

"Why didn't Morita believe Ponzi exactly?" Steve asked curiously immediately upon finishing the chapter.

Bucky's smile wavered and his cheeks burned. "Go onto the next chapter." He said. 

With a dull sense of dread and great curiosity, Steve did so. 

_Chapter 9: The Man from Villach_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait! Please leave a comment!  
> If you're interested in more fanfiction by me, I also write ASOIAF, Game of Thrones, and Les Mis fanfiction. 
> 
> If you're interested in original work, I have a series where I post snippets of material from the novel I am working on. You might as well get a taste of what keeps me from updating for so long sometimes, haha. (No, but seriously, sorry for taking so long with updates.)
> 
> I'd really appreciate you guys checking out my other stuff, but thank you still for your continuous support of this work!


	7. "Cousin" Alexandru

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I own nothing.

_Chapter 9: The Man from Villach_

_In May, 1986, Ponzi and his mother Janet publicly demanded Morita present evidence to back his counter claims. Prior to this, Morita had skillfully avoided answering this same demand in several interviews, including his appearance on_ Larry King Live _. Morita often simply responded, "Bucky and I, and all the rest of the Commandos, went through Hell and high water together. Everything in-between too. I know things about Bucky that not even his parents would have known." Morita at first declined to give his reasons for his belief in Ponzi's illegitimacy, however, Ponzi continually egged him on to do so through various media and was very vocal towards the media outlets that would pay him so much as an ounce of attention. Eventually, Morita became "fed up" and called_ The Daily Bugle _._

_On July 5, 1986, Robertson arrived at Morita's Florida home. Over a lunch lovingly prepared by Morita's wife Sunny and his visiting grandchildren, Morita explained to Robertson why he so firmly believed that Ponzi and Ross' claims were fraudulent. Robertson returned to his hotel that evening in disbelief. In his June 30th article, Robertson alleges he wrestled with what he had been told for several hours, debating whether it was within his rights to present such private information to the public, and if proving Ponzi a fraud was worth the possibility of destroying Bucky Barnes' image in the minds of most Americans. After several anxious hours, Robertson called his airline at one o'clock in the morning to switch flights from the 10 am to New York City to the 9 am to Washington D.C._

_Timothy "Dum Dum" Dugan and Peggy Dugan nee Carter were predominant figures in Washington D.C society for several reasons. Dugan was a Howling Commando and Carter was a former agent of the SSR, which oversaw Captain America and his Commandos. Of course, Carter's relationship--or near relationship rather, with the famous Captain was so well-known that her likeness has appeared in several Captain America-centered media to date, ranging from movies to comics to radio dramas which she famously despised. Dugan and Carter worked for the US government, it was known, but their exact occupations within it were a closely guarded secret that to this day their contemporaries and critics may only speculate upon. This secretiveness made any news surrounding the pair absolutely titillating. Thus, when the usually carefully silent couple agreed to an interview with a journalist from a small-time New York City newspaper, D.C was soon buzzing. Several journalists even stalked their New Yorker colleague to the Dugan's front door._

_Robertson's article and its contents became highly anticipated. Rumors swirled for over two weeks around the meeting with the Dugan's and Morita and what those meetings revealed about Bucky Barnes and the Ponzi affair. Several articles chipped in their two cents on the matter and there was no shortage of speculation on why Robertson's article was taking so long to be published. Young journalist E.J Wong stood out from the crowd, however. Fully admitting to being inspired by her own sexual orientation, E.J Wong made the gutsy move of submitting an article to her editor focused on Bucky Barnes' sexuality and the possibility of his being gay, the first of its kind since 1969._

_Wong fully expected to have it thrown back in her face and to be fired on the spot, considering the homophobic climate of the era. However, Wong's editor surprised her and allowed the piece to be published._ _The backlash was, of course, swift and brutal and Wong received several death threats, as well as threats of corrective rape because of her work. There were more surprises in store for Wong, however. A huge wave of support of her article surged forth to counteract its criticisms. Wong enjoyed the debate surrounding her article for a one week period in a stunned state. "I couldn't believe it." Wong said to a former classmate from Yale and fellow journalist, Ian Stiglitz, the only interview she submitted to on the subject of her article. "I thought I'd be lynched on the spot for so much as suggesting Captain America shook a gay man's hand once, let alone that his best friend was one. I would have actually been okay with it too, because I would have at least gone down for standing up for homosexual visibility. But...people are accepting it. It's only speculation and no one had to take it seriously, but they are and they're talking about it and people are expressing willingness to accept a queer Bucky Barnes!"_

 _Despite her enjoyment of the public's mixed bag reaction, Wong did not expect any confirmation of her pet theory and braced herself for the smug laughter of her homophobic critics and her impending fall back into obscurity. There was one last surprise in store for Wong, however. On July 22, 1986, The Daily Bugle's headline read as such:_ "Bucky Barnes: homosexual?" _The public went wild for Robertson's article. Homophobes raged, the LGBT community celebrated, and everyone in-between was left gaping with surprise._

_In his article, Robertson describes with great detail his two early July interviews and what was shared with him during each. On July 5, 1986, Robertson and Jim Morita sat down to lunch on the veranda on Morita's Florida home. The air still reeked of Fourth of July barbecue and sparklers. Morita's grandchildren, Justin and Tara Dugan, played hacky sack the yard as Robertson and their grandfather spoke. Sunny Morita was settled on a nearby lawn chair for a nap with her Pomeranian Cookie. Morita heaved a great sigh as he served Robertson a cup of coffee._

_"I hope that Buck doesn't get pissed with me for this." He said in a whisper, careful of his wife and the children. Morita leveled Robertson with a stern look and continued,"To be honest, I'm not even totally sure if this is the truth. It's not like...there's no way I could know. Buck wouldn't have risked telling me or any of the other Commandos. At least during the war. Who knows what might have happened afterwards if he'd lived."_

_"What do you mean? Was Barnes hiding something?" Robertson asked very tentatively._

_"Yes, I believe he was." Morita confessed._

_"And what would that something be?" Robertson describes Morita as having remained silent for several minutes, likely contemplating what he was about to say. This was his last chance to turn back, of course. Robertson waited with baited breath, his pen poised on his notepad to put Morita's words to paper in case his tape recorder proved unreliable. It seemed an eternity, but finally Morita answered Robertson's question: "I believe that Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes of the Howling Commandos was a...a homosexual."_

"Morita thought you were gay?" Steve exclaimed. Looking up from the Starkpad, he saw Bucky carefully avoiding his gaze while his face burned cherry red. Steve bit his bottom lip thoughtfully. "Are you gay, Bucky?" He asked carefully.

Bucky rolled his eyes but his flush didn't fade a single shade of crimson. "No, I just...Finish the chapter and you'll understand a bit better."

_Robertson was shocked by this statement and pleaded for an explanation for this belief. Morita explained that his suspicions went back as far their torturous stay at the Austrian HYDRA facility. Morita began his story with his own capture. "I worked in communications at the start of the war. I wasn't necessarily a combatant, so I was captured later on than the 107th and the units Dernier, Falsworth, and Jones came from. I was stationed in Azzano and was in charge of a communications center set up in an old boarded up bar. I was trying to contact the 107th, who were supposed to be fighting outside the city. I'd lost contact with them just a little after midnight after catching snippets of distress calls. They were hard to believe. Nazis vaporizing their own with huge tanks and guns that shot bright white lasers. I could only assume that the guys manning the coms out there had gone nuts at long last. I radioed high command and they declared a retreat, which I relayed to the 107th. I didn't get a reply. I later found out that was because those who were left of the 107th had all retreated a long time ago by then and the coms had been abandoned in the battlefield._

_"I was packing up, getting ready to hightail it out of there with my men when the doors to the bar exploded. A bunch of guys in weird uniforms even by Nazi standards marched in with even weirder guns. Me and the rest of my crew put our hands up and went to our knees. I don't think I need to clarify that the weird uniform guys were Hydra. They took all our equipment and then shackled us all together like a chain gang. We were loaded onto a truck and taken to the facility in Austria. I knew we were being sent to one of those concentration camps everyone had been hearing about, or something similar at least. I hated the idea of escaping a camp in America just to die in another one in Austria. I cursed a storm the whole way to Austria."_

_Robertson, of course somewhat impatient, asked what that had to do with Barnes and his supposed homosexuality._

_"I was in a bad mood when I got to the Hydra facility. And I mean, a really_ bad _mood." Morita said. "And because of my bad mood, no one wanted to talk to me at first. Well, because of that and my ethnicity, but I digress. Anyways, I was isolated those first few days before I managed to calm down a bit. All alone like that, I had nothing to do besides build weapons except watch my fellow prisoners. Bucky caught my attention right away because of this sick puppy dog look about him._

 _"And when I say 'sick puppy dog', I mean_ sick puppy dog. _I would have sworn looking at him that he was always thinking of his girl back home, hoping and praying he would make it back to her and that she wouldn't forget him. That kind of pissed me off, I have to admit. 'What the Hell does this guy think he's doing, moping around because of a girl he'd probably be done with anyway by now if it wasn't for the war?' I thought. 'He should focus more on surviving. If that girl gives a single fuck about him, she'd agree with me.'_

_"Well, to make a long story short, once I calmed down I asked Barnes about it. We were corralled into the same cell one night and I scooted over beside him. I asked him if he had a girl back home. I guess he got that question a lot, seeing as how he didn't raise an eyebrow at me asking and gave a well-practiced 'no, I don't' in reply." Morita looked down at his coffee bashfully. "I was a bit embarrassed because of what I thought earlier. I tried to tell Barnes I only asked because I thought he looked like he was missing someone very sorely, like a girl." Morita sobered then, according to Robertson. "Barnes then said something that I thought was a bit weird at the time. 'I have been missing someone. My best friend Steve.' He said. Now, don't think me homophobic. It's just, back then, even when thinking someone was gay wasn't even really an option, it was hard to believe anyone would look so heartsick when thinking about just a friend."_

_Robertson was dubious of this line of reasoning. "Do you have any other evidence beyond that?"_

_"Well, what do you think happened when Steve finally did show up?" Morita replied, chuckling with mirthful eyes. "This guy in the strangest get-up you've ever seen waltzes in and saves everyone's asses, including myself and Barnes, who everyone just assumed was dead meat after the guards took him away, and he manages to survive a fiery explosion of death after apparently confronting some freak show with a red skull. It was a fucking trip! It took three days for me to stop pinching myself. When I finally did, I was approached by Cap about forming a special team. Of course I jumped at the opportunity. That first meeting though, with the rest of the guys and the SSR, I was in for a surprise. Bucky and Cap greeted me and Buck introduced the Star-Spangled Man as Steve Rogers, his best friend. I don't know what I thought before, but it had never occurred to me that the guy who had rescued us all was that friend Barnes had gotten so sick over._

_"I brushed it off at first, but then I got curious about how Barnes would act now that he and his friend were reunited. They were joined at the hip, I noticed as soon as I started paying attention. And no wonder, considering they'd been friends since they were kids apparently. I never saw two better friends than Barnes and Rogers. Those two clearly loved each other--Barnes just happened to love Rogers a bit more, I think."_

_"Please explain." Robertson pleaded with Morita._

_"Bucky loved Cap, no one can deny that, whether you think he was gay or not. At first, I honestly just figured it was a really deep, brotherly friendship. Philia or Storge*, ya know? But last I checked, a guy doesn't get jealous of their brother's girl." Explained Morita._

_"Do you mean to imply Sergeant Barnes was jealous of Agent Carter's relationship with Captain Rogers?" Asked Robertson._

_Morita nodded the affirmative. "Not that I mean to say he had anything against her." He quickly added._ _"Bucky loved Peg just as much as the rest of the Commandos. I just think it irked him to not be the only one to see Cap the way he did anymore. The Howling Commandos, I have to admit, we were all a little starstruck. I won't presume that I ever knew the Steve Rogers that Bucky and Peggy knew and loved. I knew and loved the Captain, for the most part. For Bucky and Peggy, Captain America was just a dumb costume they could tease Rogers about. I think that bothered Barnes though, not being the only one who could see how great his friend was. For so long, it'd just been him, and then suddenly this girl who's absolutely perfect for his friend in every way comes out of nowhere and he isn't the only one anymore._

_"I fancy he felt bad for being jealous. You could see it on his face. When regular soldiers we came across fawned over Cap, Barnes was laughing along with the rest of us at how awkward Rogers could be. It was easy because those soldiers were fawning over Captain America, not Steve Rogers. But then we'd meet up with the SSR and Peggy and it'd be like something out of a movie. Peggy and Rogers would be flirting and you could tell it wasn't the stars and stripes that woman was smiling at, and for a moment, Bucky would look so jealous. And then the next minute, he'd look ashamed of himself. Finally, he would force a smile to try and be happy for his friend."_

_Morita continued to elaborate on aspects of Barnes' behavior that garnered his suspicion throughout the war. These apparent "clues" ranged for longing looks at Captain Rogers to a lacking interest in women the Commandos came across during the war. It was a single event in Austria that solidified Morita's belief that Barnes was not entirely heterosexual, Morita confessed to Robertson in the final moments of their interview._

_"It was honestly just a month before Bucky fell from the train. We were in Villach, Austria, held up in an old theater while we waited for extraction. Falsworth and I were on watch while Dum Dum and Cap slept in a projector room and Gabe and Dernier camped out in the aisles. I'd thought Barnes was in the projector room like Cap and Dum Dum, but...I heard a crash in the alley behind the theater. I crept back there from a side door to see what was up only to catch Barnes slipping back inside the theater through the backdoor. Not two seconds later, a nervous-looking man came into the alley and went to go knock at the back door. One knock and Barnes shot back outside again. 'I should have known you'd be back, you suicidal idiot.' Barnes said as he shoved the guy against the side of a building. I nearly stepped out of the shadows to help out, but I held back, waiting to see what would happen. My worst fear in that moment was that Barnes had turned traitor. Barnes and the man spoke in Romanian after that, or at least I think it was Romanian. Anyways, I got more and more nervous because I couldn't tell what they were talking about, and soon they went from sounding angry and frustrated with each other to talking in whispers like a pair of close friends. Eventually, I got fed up and turned to go back through the side door and get the others to help straighten the whole mess out, and that's about as far as my plan really got before I froze. What made me freeze up? Well, believe or not, I heard Barnes tell the man he loved him in English. Hand to God. 'Love you, Alexandru. Be safe, and hopefully we'll be able to see each other again when this is all over.' That's exactly what he said."_

"Buck," Steve said, looking up from the Starkpad. "You know...you can tell me anything." 

Bucky, still slightly flushed, rolled his eyes and gestured for Steve to just keep on reading. 

"No, Bucky, seriously," Steve persisted. "You can tell me anything. I would never judge you, Buck, ever." 

"Steve, it's not as clear cut as Morita makes it out to be." Bucky protested. 

"So you're saying Morita misheard you, or that he misinterpreted what happened in that alley? Then what did happen, Buck? What was really said back then?" Steve pressed.

Bucky sighed and swept his hair out of his eyes, behind his ears. "He didn't mishear anything. I did tell that man I loved him, to be safe so we could meet again, but not because he was my lover or anything. When would I have had the time to start a relationship anyways?" 

"Who was that guy, Bucky?" Steve pressed. 

"My cousin, alright?" Bucky half-growled, stomping around the kitchen island into the living room. Steve followed at a respectful distance. 

While Bucky threw himself onto the couch with a borderline scowl, Steve hovered behind the piece of furniture with a crossed arms and a shamed face. 

"I'm sorry, Buck. I shouldn't have jumped to conclusions." He apologized. 

"Don't. Just don't, Steve." Bucky grumbled. "I'm not mad about that. I'm just frustrated because...I didn't remember any of that until _after_ I read that chapter." 

"Did you think--" 

"No," Bucky interjected quickly. "I...it wasn't that. That didn't matter really. What bothered me was the fact I didn't remember Alexandru. Did I ever talk about him, before the war?" 

Steve leaned over the back of the couch and shook his head. "No, but to be fair, you didn't talk about Romania too much. You only told me you were Romanian after we'd been friends for awhile and after that, you hardly talked about it more than a handful of times." 

"Alexandru was my favorite cousin." Bucky said, smiling thinly at the ceiling. "He was my great uncle's bastard grandson, or something kind of distant like that, which is why he escaped the Nazis. Our great grandmother wasn't Jewish, and his mother was the daughter of Orthodox Christians. With only two Jewish great grandparents, and not being a Jewish practitioner or married to a Jew, he was determined a "crossbreed" and escaped the fate of his father and our other family members who stayed in Romania. 

"Sandu heard about the Commandos being spotted moving south through Austria. He tracked us down to Villach and even managed to find the theater through some detective work," Bucky chuckled weakly. "Good thing he was on our side, right?" Steve and Bucky managed to share a momentary laugh before Bucky sobered up. "When he came knocking on the back door that first time, I nearly killed him. But I stopped short of pullin' the trigger when he said my name--my original name, I mean. And then I recognized him. Twenty years and Alexandru's ears were still too big for his dumb face!

"We moved away from the theater, to another alley a few streets over. Sandu told me all about what had happened to our family since the war started. It...Steve, it was awful." As Bucky sat up on the couch, Steve rounded the piece of furniture to sit beside his friend and wrap a comforting arm around his shoulders, seeking to be of some comfort, even if it seemed like as impossible a feat as trouncing Galactus in an eating contest. Steve was well aware that learning second-hand what happened to your loved ones could be like putting your insides in a blender. It was six kinds of awful to hear that Bucky had to go through that even before his fall.

"I'm so sorry, Bucky." Steve whispered, rubbing comforting circles in-between Bucky's shoulder-blades. Bucky relaxed under the ministrations and let out a long, low sigh. One that didn't contain frustration or anger or anything but calm for once. "S'okay, Steve." He mumbled, slumping back against the couch cushions. "Let's just watch some bad television for awhile and forget about this at least until after lunch." Steve smiled and nodded his assent as he reached for the remote. They eventually settled on an MTV reality show and lapsed into a semi-comfortable silence. 

* * *

 

After lunch, Steve left for a meeting with Stark and Agent Hill at the Tower, leaving Bucky alone at long last. It was rare that Bucky could say he was thankful to be without Steve, but now was definitely one of those times. As soon as he saw Steve's bike pull out of the neighboring parking garage, Bucky went to change for the the gym in the basement, hoping to work out some of his nerves on an unfortunate punching bag. However, not two minutes after Steve and Bucky said their goodbyes, Bucky's phone went off. 

It was a blocked number. 

Bucky took a deep breath before answering. "What is it, Natalia?" He asked in a dull voice that did not properly represent his anxiety at that moment. 

"Your cousin, eh?" Natalia's wry voice spoke on the other end of the line. 

"It's the truth." Bucky snapped. He was in no mood to be teased. 

"I believe you." Natalia assured him without a single note of anything resembling reassurance in her tone. "Steve does too, it looks like." She added. 

"I would hope so. It's the truth." 

"I know that, James." Natalia replied, tone serious now. "But how long are you going to continue to hide this from him? You had an opportunity right there and you didn't take it." 

"It's not like I'm gay. So bringing it up because people thought I was gay didn't seem like the best situation to start that conversation." Bucky defended himself. "Besides, this book is an entire issue unto itself. I don't have the time or energy to deal with two shitstorms at once." 

"True. Just don't let me catch you slamming any more windows and doors shut. You're braver than that, James." Natalia said, this time, her tone soaked in reassurance. 

Bucky smiled and promised to talk to Steve the next time an opportunity presented itself. "Until then, however, I'm going to go looking for those bugs of yours." He added in a tone probably a little too blithe for the subject matter. "Good luck." Natalia wished him wryly before hanging up. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Philia: Ancient Greek word for strong friendship love  
> *Storge: Ancient Greek word for familial love  
> *Nazis defined who was Jewish by great-grandparents.  
> 3-4 Jewish grandparents meant you were fully Jewish by law.  
> Someone with 1 or 2 Jewish grandparents who was not a registered member of a Jewish congregation or married to a Jew was a "crossbreed" or a "half-Jew".  
> If you had 1 or 2 Jewish grandparents and were registered or married to a Jew or were born to even one parent who was Jewish after the Nuremberg Laws passed, you were fully Jewish.


	8. Women Scorned

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Bucky searched high and low for the bugs. His efforts went unrewarded--not even so much as a participation ribbon. Natalia had really outdone herself this time. The student had surpassed the master and all that. Bucky might have been proud if it wasn't so damn frustrating. After a few hours, he gave up, resolving that the worst that could happen was he'd bore his ex-student to death with his mundane, domestic existence. The rest of the afternoon was spent catching up on chores around the apartment and lounging in the living room. He avoided the Starkpad for the most part, feeling a bit too emotionally exhausted to read any of  _Bucky Barnes' Son_ that day. Steve returned to the apartment at six with takeout, which the two of them shared while watching the standard weeknight sitcom lineup. The subject of Stark and Steve's meeting with him was carefully avoided, as usual. 

"I couldn't find the bugs." Bucky mentioned off-handedly halfway through  _Modern Family._

"Huh?" Steve hummed around his Chow mein. 

"I couldn't find the bug." Bucky repeated loudly over the chorus of screams courtesy of the Dunphy family. 

"Oh, the ones Natasha hid." Steve said once he swallowed. "If you're really keen on privacy, I could maybe get Coulson to loan us some tech to help find them." 

Bucky shrugged his shoulders. "It doesn't really matter to me if Natalia spies on us. I trust her, for the most part, and we both know the worst she could do is blackmail us into actually leaving the apartment on weekends. But even then, let's face it, we're a pair of boring old men who spend our days reading dusty old books and watching movies from thirty years ago. If anyone's suffering because of these bugs, it's her. Or that poor intern she stole from Stark." 

"Oh yeah, Pepper mentioned that. Apparently hardly anyone's seen this Keith kid since Nat hijacked him a few months back and she and Maria are starting to get a little worried." 

"You think Natalia's turned him into her little man servant?" Bucky asked laughingly. 

Smiling wryly, Steve spoke in a story-teller voice, "Well, she _is_ the Black Widow. Her web ensnares all who dare to get too close." 

"Up to and including WWII super soldiers." Bucky added.

"Still worries me a little." Steve remarked. "I mean, this kid's twenty two tops. I'd hate to see him get mixed up in one of our messes somehow because he's thinking with the wrong head around Natasha."

"Twenty-two?" Bucky let out an appreciative whistle before shrugging his shoulders. "Worse comes to worst, we'll just clue the kid in on the fact a more accurate codename for Natalia would 'Black Cougar'. The kid will become so annoying she'll have no choice but to hand him back over."

Just then, Steve's phone went off. Upon taking it out of his pocket, Steve announced it was a blocked number and the super soldiers shared a meaningful look mostly consisting of Steve doing his best impersonation of a Winifred Barnes/Sarah Rogers hybrid before Steve actually answered. Bucky would have given him a shit-eating grin in return if he hadn't been in the middle of doing a quick inventory of all the exits and possible defensive weaponry in the apartment in case Natalia's secret apartment turned out to be right next door. 

"Hey, Nat." Steve greeted the Black Widow with appropriate unease. "Sure, I'll put you on speaker phone right now." He said half a second later as he and Bucky both paled. 

* * *

The next morning, Bucky woke up at six. He stayed in bed until seven, waiting for Steve to get up, get ready, and leave for his jog with Sam. When he finally heard the front door's lock click, only then did he crawl out of bed and go into the living room to collect his Starkpad. He returned to bed with it a moment later and settled in to pick up where he'd left off before he was forced to get Steve up to speed yesterday with Ponzi's wife filing for divorce. 

 _Kate Ponzi cited irreconcilable differences in her August 16, 1986 filing. In a brief statement she released via_ The New York Times _Mrs. Ponzi--who had reverted to her maiden name Bronte by then--revealed she and her husband had drifted apart since he began his crusade for his rightful share of the Proctor Inheritance, which allowed the band-aids the couple has slapped over the cracks in their marriage throughout its run to finally peal away. Bronte also firmly declared that divorced or married, she stood by Ponzi's claim that Barnes was his father. Despite this statement, the media took great joy in speculating how the divorce might affect the situation._

 _Predictably, among the first theories presented was the prediction that the divorce would eventually result in Bronte revealing that Ponzi's claims were completely fraudulent. Other theories were far more creative. Ian Stiglitz, the close friend and former classmate of E.J Wong, leveraged his close ties to the now well-known journalist to secure a position at_ The Jewish Week.  _With a larger audience than he had ever known before and great expectations put upon him thanks to the kindly recommendations of several noteworthy colleagues, including Robertson of_ The Daily Bugle _, Stigiltz felt the need to make a "grand debut". Thus it came to pass that Stigiltz's debut article with_ The Jewish Week  _was a ruthless criticism of Ponzi's quest for money even after securing plenty of funds for his family through his book deal, as well as his seeking to claim the glory and other perks of being Bucky Barnes' son while neglecting to pay respect to anything his supposed father held dear, such as his family, his faith, and his comrades. Stiglitz concluded the article by stating, "I would hope that Kate Bronte, once rid of this parasite on the good Barnes name, will put effort worth in correcting her ex-husband's mistakes through his children. If Bronte truly does believe Harry Ponzi's claims, a synagogue near you may find themselves with a few new members in the near future."_

_Though it is likely Stiglitz did not feel particular strongly about Ponzi's behavior in regards to Bucky Barnes' religion or his relations with his so-called relations personally, he was nonetheless praised by the Jewish community of New York City for pointing out what many had apparently taken issue with for a long time at that point. Ponzi came under attack for attempting to profit off his supposed father without paying respect to said father through some means. Likewise, the Jewish community cast a stern gaze on Kate Bronte, waiting for her to make her move on the matter as divorce proceedings carried on. For many, whether or not Bronte took steps to introduce her children to their grandfather's religion and culture would prove whether Barnes was the children's grandfather at all, or at the very least reveal that even Ponzi's own wife doubted his claims._

_It should be noted that the Ponzi children--Aretha, Janis, and Diana*--were either nearly adults or already were at this point in time. Aretha was born in 1961 and was on the cusp of her twenty-fifth birthday when her mother filed. Janis was only four years younger, and Diana was sixteen. The public grossly overestimated the amount of power the Ponzi's still wielded over their daughters. In some cases, it seemed that the public was in fact totally unaware of how old the girls were. One notable example is an article from a Denver newspaper discussing the hiatus Ponzi put on his latest tour to drum up publicity for his second book to attend his daughter Aretha's graduation. This graduation was from graduate school, as Aretha had been studying at Colorado State University since before the Barnes Affair took wing in '84. However,_ The Denver Times  _painted it as a graduation from high school, perhaps from standard university if that. This lack of fact-checking of course led to a greater wave of backlash than there would have been without it when Kate Bronte announced that she would neither encourage nor disapprove of her children taking interest in the Jewish faith of their grandfather._

Bucky paused in his reading to rub his temples, setting the Starkpad on his bedside table. Alas, his headache continued to build. 

Now, it was no secret that Bucky had been a devout Hebrew. He couldn't really fault any of those media hounds for reminding the world of that fact--there was actually more good than bad that could be done by reminding America once in awhile that their so-called "best friend" was a Jew and a proud one. But to be perfectly frank, it was like tilting every picture frame in the God damn house for him every time someone tried to paint it like Judiasm was 60% of his character. If anything, it was 13% tops!

He'd seen the same kind of exaggeration in the 1979 stand-alone Captain America movie that he'd watched with Steve weeks before. The screenwriters had clearly been really fond of "nice Jewish boys". Movie!Bucky had been all boyish charm, reliability, and gentleness, with a head for business and a habit of throwing in Yiddish at random into everyday conversations with the good Captain and his fellow Commandos (when the Commandos actually got lines, that is). It all bugged the hell out of Bucky. In truth, while he did have a business degree from Yeshiva, his work for the New York Hunger Society had been that of one of _several_   consultants. He hadn't been any sort of young hot shot with his feet kicked up on his desk and a stunning secretary named Shiela, and the work he did wasn't glamorous in any sense of the word, unlike Movie!Bucky's. Likewise, the Barnes' family hadn't been the types to sprinkle Yiddish throughout every spoken sentence like the Movie!Barnes'. In real life, the Barnes family had used Yiddish sparingly in comparison--or rather,  _realistically._ Plus, in real life, when they did use Yiddish around Steve he actually understood them from years spent around them and didn't look at them like a dumb goldfish. And Bucky sure as Hell wouldn't describe himself as "boyishly charming" right before the war. He'd dropped "boyish" by the time he was graduated Yeshiva and left that shtick to Steve, and more over, Steve got himself into trouble too often for Bucky to have ever been the gentle pacifist that Movie!Bucky was. 

Bucky felt his stomach twist into a boy scout's knot suddenly. 

Maybe he just didn't like the movie because it made him wonder, he thought miserably. Movie!Bucky, like him, was a draftee and the movie really played up how much he didn't want to go to war. Bucky wished he had reacted like Movie!Bucky. "I don't want to kill people, Stevie! I don't want to have a gun shoved in my hands and put holes in guys' heads!" He'd cried drunkenly--and handsomely--into skinny Brad Dourif's shoulder. (That was the only thing Bucky really loved about the movie: the casting. Brad Dourif and Ryan O'neal as pre-serum and post-serum Steve respectively were great choices, and Laurence Olivier as the Red Skull and Juliet Mills as Peggy were downright perfect, even if it was just a paycheck role for Olivier. Bucky couldn't even find fault in Michael Anderson Jr. as himself. Even if the characters weren't accurate the cast did a great job and Bucky could see why the movie was such a success.) Bucky wished that he was more like Movie!Bucky during the war. Movie!Bucky hadn't been a sniper, hadn't impersonally killed dozens of men without the decency of looking them in the eye when he did it; Movie!Bucky had been a steadfast pacifist who made all sorts of speeches about the evils both sides of the war were committing and how torture and all the killing the Commandos did was just as bad as all the torture and killing Hydra did. Movie!Bucky and Movie!Steve fought, they disagreed. Movie!Bucky didn't always go along with Captain America and the SSR's plans or methods, at least not without a lot of cajoling or even threats. Movie!Bucky, all and all, seemed to be a better person than the real life Bucky Barnes. 

Bucky heaved a sigh, wondering how he got so caught up in these negative thoughts all of a sudden. He glanced over at his bedside table and saw the Starkpad. "Oh yeah..." He muttered as he picked it back up and returned to his reading. 

_In the fallout of their mothers' statement, the youngest Ponzi daughter was approached by her father and grandmother about appeasing the angered Jewish community. Diana was spoken to on the matter during a weekend visit to her father's Manhattan apartment in January 1987. The visit ended early when Diana angrily fled the island and returned to her mother's apartment in Brooklyn Saturday morning. The following week, a story from the Washington High School Times was republished in several New York City newspapers. The article, authored by Miss Ponzi's best friend Cindy Evans, was based on an 'interview' Diana gave with Miss Evans the Monday following the Friday evening spent with her father. "It seemed like it was going to be a nice weekend. Dad promised to take me to a nice restaurant and a musical on Broadway, and...I was just really excited. I hadn't gotten to spend a lot of time with him since he published his first book, so..." The weekend would not turn out as the happy reunion Diana hoped for, however._

_Only three mere hours after her arrival at his apartment, Ponzi's mother Janet arrived for dinner seemingly unannounced. "I was in my room doing my makeup for the restaurant when I heard my dad answer the door, and then I heard my nanna's voice. I go out into the living room and I just see her and my dad talking in whispers, which was weird because my nanna and dad have no concept of inside voices--it's the most embarrassing thing at the movies and in restaurants. Anyways, I asked why nanna was there, and my dad said he'd forgotten to tell me that she was coming along and he apologized, so I brushed it off. It's not like it was a big deal."  Explained Diana. The trio proceeded to take a taxi to_ Coq Noir,  _a trendy Manhattan restaurant known for blackening every edible substance that entered its kitchen and its pride in its sophisticated atmosphere.* Diana had been ecstatic to have the chance to dine there, though her high hopes for the evening began to dwindle as soon as she, her father, and grandmother arrived._

_"I didn't like the blackened spice chicken as much as I thought I would," Diana confessed. "I hated it really, but I didn't say anything because Dad seemed really excited to show off the nice, expensive food he could afford now. He didn't say anything, but you could see the pride on his face, and what he didn't say my Nanna did. And that was all alright too, until bragging on Dad seemed to be all Nanna could do. The meal, Dad's apartment, his books, the cars he bought her and Janis; she wouldn't shut up about Dad. Well, actually, another name did come up an awful lot. 'James would be so proud.' She'd say. 'Even though your grandfather's gone, he's still managed to provide for you all.' It only got worse as the night wore on. By the time we left, I was on the verge of...of doing some really mean, I guess, if I heard the name 'James' come out her mouth one more time._

_"As we got our coats from check, I mentioned how much I enjoyed the meal, and the rest of the restaurant, just to show I was grateful, ya know? Dad asked me if I'd like to come again someday, or try other fancy places around Manhattan. Of course I said yes! But then I kind of regretted it because, well, for two reasons. For one, I remembered how much I really didn't like the food, even if it was supposed to be gourmet. Second, he got this weird look, my dad, I mean. He looked smug, victorious even. I didn't like that look one bit."_

_Diana and her father and grandmother left_ Coq Noir  _at ten o'clock and arrived back at Ponzi's apartment in a timely fashion. The drive home had been nearly silent according to Diana. "It was the first real tip off something was up. Nanna and Dad were loudmouths, the both of them. They never went more than five minutes in silence. Even at Grandpa Ross' funeral neither one could go, like, two minutes without making some comment on the flowers or the organist or how peaceful Grandpa looked. They didn't have a single clue when to zip it then, and now in the damn taxi they were mutes. It gave me a clue that they were planning something, and suddenly I started thinking a whole lot more about all that bragging Nanna did at the restaurant and Dad's weird smug smile. I pretty much knew what would happen by the time we got back to the apartment." Upon arriving, Diana attempted to escape her father and grandmother by announcing she was tired and wanted to go straight to bed._

_Her grandmother Janet insisted she stay up for a while longer until she took her own leave. Diana could not resist her grandmother and reluctantly agreed. "I felt bad because I kind of avoid her sometimes. When we spend time together, it's kind of boring. So I stayed because I felt bad. I still didn't want to get pulled into Dad's mess though, so I turned on the TV, looking for a News station that was still on, but it was pretty much all static. Then I tried the radio in the corner of the living room, saying I wanted to listen to some music because the apartment was 'too quiet'. Really I was trying to find a talk show or somethin' distracting. Nanna wrinkled her nose at everything I tried to put on and Dad eventually told me the neighbors might get mad and call. So I was forced to sit on the couch with them and just talk._ _  
_

_"They practically nosedived into it once they had me cornered. Dad asked me point-blank if I wanted to go to restaurants like_ Coq Noir  _every weekend, if I wanted to go to Broadway shows all the time, if I wanted to go to some Ivy League school, not a state school like Janis and Aretha, if I wanted a car like nanna's. I already said yes to the restaurant earlier so I couldn't change my answer then, but I said no to everything else. 'I'm okay going to a state school, and I'm too new a driver for new cars. I'd smash it to pieces in the Lincoln Tunnel.' I said. Nanna insisted I have the finer things in life. She even said my grandpa would have wanted it. Stupidly, I said, 'Grandpa Ross would have wanted me to work hard and scrimp and save my way into school. Remember how he yelled at Aretha for taking out all those loans?' They jumped to correct me. They were spring-loaded! 'Bucky is your grandfather!', they said. 'And he didn't die so his granddaughter could get screwed out of the good life. If [Rebecca] Proctor could capitalize on it, we should be able to, too.' Right when he said that, I lost all faith that they gave a damn about Bucky Barnes at all. That Stiglitz guy was right, I thought. All they want is money.  
_

_"I stayed quiet though and let them keep up. My dad asked me how I'd like to be a Senator's wife someday, a Manhattan socialite, even a member of the Establishment*. Nanna even suggested I could date some nice, rich boys, the kind that belong to Tennis clubs on Long Island. Boys that come from political dynasties. I could have my pick of them, she said, because those boys are being groomed to be congressmen, senators, presidents, and they all want Bucky Barnes, the Howling Commandos, Captain America in the family. I hated every word of it. I felt like one of those girls from those books about medieval maidens whose families try to marry them off to Lords and Princes and Kings even though all the maiden wants is a nice stable boy who doesn't say stuff like 'you throw like a girl' to guys in gym class, and a horse and carriage of her own, maybe not even a_  new  _horse and carriage. I was almost relieved when they finished up by asking me to go to temple with all of them the next day. I told them yes, just to shut them up. My dad gave me a pat on the back and called me a good girl, and Nanna hugged me. I hugged her back even though I hated her a little bit. I felt used liked a dirty dish rag._ _  
_

_"I went to my room and repacked all my stuff, then I set my alarm for five o'clock in the morning. When I woke up, I left right away and took a cab to Brooklyn. I had to sit on the stoop for two hours waiting for my mom to wake up and let me in because I forgot my keys of all things back at my dad's. While I was sitting there, I thought about all of last night and what had been said and I got so angry thinking about I nearly marched right back to my dad's to give him a piece of my mind. But I didn't, and I probably wouldn't have even if I had gotten as far as his bedroom door. Instead, I decided to tell the whole school, maybe even the whole world what happened. And to warn my sisters, of course."_

_The article quickly caught the attention of several local newspapers and was reprinted in two dozen papers. Once again, Ponzi and his mother lost virtually all their support and credibility. Ponzi reportedly beseeched his daughter to take it all back but Diana refused and instead went to her school newspaper once again to report her father's 'whinging'. "He called me yesterday and begged like a hungry bum for me to take it all back, say it was all lies, that I had thrown a tantrum and lied because he said no to buying me a car. I swear I might have hit him if he were in the same room as me. When I told my mom, she nearly took off to Manhattan to do it for me. Anyways, he tried to bribe me with all those promises from Friday night. Ivy League, cars, rich husbands,_ Coq Noir  _every night. I told him no. I wish I said it really fiercely and flat out, but I was scared. He's my dad, after all. So I just said things like, 'No, I don't want those things. No, I'm fine with a State school. I'd marry a gas station clerk, Daddy, as long as it was for love.' I was only really blunt about the restaurant. I told him I hated it anyway. When he asked why I did the article, he started getting really mad. He was asking why I wanted to ruin everything, why I couldn't just leave it be if I didn't want to become a Jew. I kind of broke down then, and I said something like, 'because I didn't want you to get away with it.' Then I hang up. I didn't mean that last part like he was cheating the Barnes family, like he was a crook. I just meant that no man should get away with trying to make his kid into a tool. I really do think he and grandma are telling the truth about Bucky, with the picture and the resemblance and all, but I don't think they really care about him. He's a meal ticket to them, and I want no part in it.'_

_In the wake of their father's manipulations, Aretha and Janis rushed to their younger sister's aid. Aretha postponed an an important job interview at Duke University even, and Janis started packing the moment her mother called and alerted her to the situation and took multiple buses to get from LA to New York City, refusing to use the car her father bought her. Aretha and Janis publicly declared that if their father ever secured his "precious" inheritance they did not wish to profit from it. Janis soon sold the car her father bought her, and her sisters followed suit by giving gifts from the father away. The public largely supported the sisters, and their mother by extension. All face lost in light of not pushing the Jewish faith onto her children was regained._

_A new faction was formed, joining the two previously existing sides of the Proctor Inheritance War. Before, there were those who thought Ponzi and his mother were trying to sell bridges, and then there were those who felt that the picture and Ponzi's resemblance made a compelling case. This new, third faction felt the same as the latter but did not feel Ponzi, nor his mother, was worthy of the Proctor inheritance and instead advocated that all the money meant for Ponzi go to the girls. When the Ponzi girls became aware of this new fraction they made no statements to the press, they contacted no form of media whatsoever. Instead, Diana and her mother packed their things and left New York for Colorado. By March 1987 the two had settled in Denver where Bronte began working as a sales assistant at a boutique and Diana was enrolled in a new school and working part time at a shoe store "to buy that horse and carriage" for herself. Aretha took a position at her former school, Colorado State University, that same year and settled into a new life as a quiet academic. To put a barrier between herself and her father's "mess", Aretha changed her name to Kate Franklin (this change only became legal in 1989). She soon faded into obscurity, a fact she is very thankful for to this day. She was outdone, however, by her younger sister Janis, who fled the country. In the summer of 1987, Janis Ponzi sent three letters to her mother and Diana, Aretha, and her father, telling them goodbye. This was the last any of them heard from her for ten years, as she soon left the United States with her boyfriend Joel Mayly for Barbados, Mayly's birthplace, where the couple wed and had several children. The lack of contact likely had more to do with the family's disapproval of Mayly than it did with Janis' father, though that was still likely a major factor. Diana and her mother had a harder time avoiding the spotlight, but thankfully there wasn't much more left to endure. By 1989, the Proctor Inheritance War would come to a decisive end. Pity they did not know that at the time._

"This book should really just be renamed 'Why Harry Ponzi is an asshole'." Bucky muttered to himself. Just then he heard the front door unlock and swing open. Steve and Sam's voices floated down the hall to meet Bucky's ears. He climbed out of bed with a smile to go greet them. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *All the Ponzi daughters are named after singers from the 60s: Aretha Franklin, Janis Joplin, & Diana Ross.
> 
> *A food trend of the 1980s was blackening /everything/. It's coming back into style actually. The 80s were also very decadent and fancy restaurants were less about eating a meal and more about blowing absurd amounts of money on "gourmet" food to show off how rich and "refined" you were. Dining habits and environments were also rather formal.
> 
> *The Establisment is a name for the elite class that holds power in a country or organization. They pick their own members, but usually not by merit or election. The American Establishment's membership is based on birth, breeding, economic standing, and education. They are virtually all socialites. All the Barnes sisters became members of the Establishment with varying ranks within it.


	9. Next Exit for Dysfunction Junction

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Bucky padded down the hall into the living where he found Sam splayed out of the couch, covered in sweat from his and Steve's jog in Central Park. Steve was in the kitchen, digging around the fridge for something. He soon emerged with two bottles of mineral water and the fixings for sandwiches. "Morning, Buck." Steve greeted him with a bright, refreshed smile. It was almost cruel to smile like that considering Sam's state on the couch, Bucky thought. Steve tossed a bottle over the counter to Sam, who caught it without looking away from the ceiling. "I'm organizing a protest. I'm going to get all the joggers in New York together and we're going to hold a big rally one morning and run around with picket signs and collection cans to buy this man a damn treadmill or something. He's giving half the city's joggers complexes." Sam said before twisting off the cap and putting the bottom of the bottle parallel to the ceiling. Steve rolled his eyes as he made three ham and cheese sandwiches. 

"So I take it the run went well?" Asked Bucky, leaning against the counter as he watched Steve's hands put together their breakfasts with mild interest. 

"I worked up a good sweat." Steve replied. Bucky looked at him like he'd just nominated Justin Bieber for a Noble Peace Prize. Steve looked back at him with plain confusion. Bucky turned to Sam and said, "Sign me up for that rally. He's clearly trying to kill you." Sam cracked up and Bucky grinned at Steve who rolled his eyes as he handed out the finished sandwiches. "Last time I checked, I wasn't setting anybody's pace but my own." He said as he took a seat on the floor between the couch and the coffee table. 

Sam scoffed. "Whatever, Mr. 'On-Your-Left'." 

"One time!" Steve protested. 

"Ten times!" 

"In one day." Steve cringed at his own lameness. 

"Steve, you're not helping your case." Bucky interjected as he turned on the morning news. "It's better just to admit that even the Star Spangled Man can be a bit of an asshole." 

"Thank you, Bucky." Said Sam, smiling smugly at Steve who was a bit red in the face. 

"I'm sorry about the 'on your left' thing, Sam." He apologized. 

"There. Was that so hard?" Sam asked. Steve only flashed a smile and turned his attention to the news. 

 _CNN_ was in the middle of covering recent news on Hillary Clinton's campaign when Bucky turned on the TV, but the anchors soon moved onto the oil industry and the recent rise in prices despite the rather low prices throughout the previous year. Of course, a short speech about renewable energy and what experts were saying about fossil fuels running out soon followed. Before signing off for commercial break, Christi Paul somberly reported they would be remembering an American and Feminist icon who had died the night before when they returned. A picture of Peggy's nursing home was briefly shown in a little box next to Christi's head on screen before they cut to commercial. 

Immediately the mood darkened. Wordlessly, Steve got up and went over to the counter where he'd left his phone. His expression went from etched with anxiety to dark with dread. His thumbs tapped away for a moment, opening and scrolling. Finally, he leaned heavily against the counter and pressed his forehead against the cold marble. 

Sam sat up with an air about him that said he was there for Steve, that he was Steve's rock and if he was needed he'd jump straight into action. Bucky didn't know what air he carried at that moment. He felt like if he did have some sort of air, it was the air of a tortoise, if that was even a thing. His shell was hard as a rock, but in the end it wasn't a rock and not made to lean on for support. It was for his own protection and his alone. He could feel himself withdrawing from impending reality into his shell already. He tried to fight it. For Steve. For Dum Dum. For Peggy. 

"Steve?" Ventured Sam in a low, cautious voice. 

"Sharon's texted me and called me ten times each. I didn't feel the phone vibrate in my pocket while we ran." Said Steve in a dull voice. 

"Steve, I'm so sorry." Sam tried to approach but suddenly Steve straightened and shook his head vehemently. 

"We don't know yet. We don't know." He said. 

Sam and Bucky shared worried looks. "Steve," Bucky started but Steve kept shaking his head as he marched past Sam and sat himself down on the couch with crossed arms and pain etched in every line of his face. "We don't know yet, Buck." He insisted, his voice cracking. Sam and Bucky shared one more worried look between them before Sam sat himself next to Steve and they began to agonizing wait for the commercials to end. 

 _CNN_ returned only a moment later, but of course that provided no relief to anyone. Victor Blackwell and Christi Paul both looked sufficiently solemn on screen. They welcomed the audience back and then Christi introduced the topic, "Late last night at  _Carroll Manor Nursing & Rehabilitation  _in Washington D.C, Agent Peggy Carter Dugan passed away after a long battle with Alzheimer's and cardiovascular disease, as well as osteoporosis." Steve made a low, wet seething sound in his throat. Sam wrapped an arm around Steve's shoulder and set to comforting him as the report proceeded. "For those of you unaware, Carter was a member of the SSR during World War II, the military branch that combated HYDRA and oversaw the Howling Commandos. Agent Carter rose to prominence for her love affair with Captain America, Steve Rogers." On screen, black and white pictures of Peggy and the Commandos during the war began to fade in and out of each other. "After the war, Agent Carter continued to work for the US government in a then unknown position until her 1992 retirement. As you all may be aware, long hidden details of Carter's occupation within the US government were finally revealed when SHIELD fell in the spring of 2014. Agent Carter was revealed to be one of the founders of SHIELD along with Howard Stark, Tony Stark's father, and Colonel Chester Philips, both of whom also worked for the SSR during the second world war and remained close friends of Carter's throughout her life." Christi and Victor appeared on screen once again along with Peggy's ID picture from the war. "Carter was an active feminist throughout her life and used her connection to Captain America to advocate civil rights alongside the Howling Commandos during the 50s and 60s. She leaves behind an adoring husband, Timothy Dugan who was one of Captain America's famous Howling Commandos, as well as their three children and eight grandchildren." Blackwell concluded. The rest of the broadcast was just a dull buzz in the background as Steve wept quietly on the couch. Sam did his best to console him, if that was even possible, while Bucky remained frozen on the other side of the living room. 

* * *

 

Steve finally called Sharon back two hours later after Sam calmed him down and Natalia arrived with palpable determination to be there for her friend. The three of them watched from the living room as Steve paced on the balcony as he spoke to Sharon. Bucky couldn't take his eyes off of Steve's red, puffy ones.

"How are you doing, Buck?" Asked Sam all of a sudden. Bucky looked at him with surprise, having somehow forgotten he and Natalia were even there.

"I'm okay, I guess. Why? It's Steve who's hurting right now." He answered quietly.

Sam and Natalia exchanged quick glances and looked at him with concern, Sam more blatantly so than Natalia of course. "She was your friend too." Said Natalia.

Bucky didn't say anything to that. In all honesty, he couldn't remember Peggy all that well, little as there was to remember of her. He hadn't been close to her during the war like he was with the Commandos. Not to say he didn't like her, he just never really got around with making friends with any of the SSR people. Steve called people like Howard Stark, Colonel Philips, and Peggy his friends, but honestly Bucky had hardly known any of them. They only qualified as his friends in the sense that any friend of Steve's was a friend of his by default.

"She was your friend, right?" Sam gently pressed. Reluctantly, Bucky shook his head.

"I honestly never got to know her very well. I don't have any doubt she was a great person, considering how Steve admires her and loved her and all, but...It would be a lie to say we were chums back in the day. Morita, Gabe, Dum Dum; they were my friends. Peggy was...I'd hate to say co-worker or acquaintance. That sounds so cold." He confessed. He gave Sam and Natalia a pleading look. "Don't tell Steve." 

"It's a promise." Sam assured him. Natalia didn't say anything but her earnest expression was enough.

Just then, the glass doors slid open and Steve stepped back inside. "She went in her sleep, they think. Peacefully and all." He announced as he dropped onto the couch with Bucky and Natalia. Natalia started rubbing circles in his back and rested her head against his shoulder. "That's the best way." She said. Steve nodded his head in hollow agreement but Bucky sat there and wondered if there was such thing as a best way to go, or even a good way. 

"Did she say anything about a funeral?" Asked Sam. 

"She's being cremated and her ashes will be sent to England to be put in a mausoleum with the rest of her family. The whole family is flying out on Tuesday and the funeral will on Thursday." Steve explained. 

"I'll make arrangements for your flight and your hotel." Natalia announced, already reaching for her phone. 

"I'm actually," Steve cleared his throat roughly. "I may not go, I think." 

Everyone stared at him with shock. 

"But, Steve, this is Peggy. She was your--" Sam protested. 

Steve shook his head. "She was never my anything. I don't have a right to her, never did. Don't get me wrong, I understand what you're thinking, what a lot of people will think, but this should belong to Peggy and her family. If I go people will make this about _me_ and _my_ loss, about a love affair from almost eighty years ago that never even really got off the ground." He said. "Peggy's funeral should be about celebrating the life Peggy had beyond Captain America and to allow a family to grieve the loss of a wife, mother, and grandmother. I don't want this to become about Captain America's wartime almost girlfriend." 

"Are you sure?" Sam asked, clearly unconvinced. "Steve, you could go incognito. You could stand way in the back. We could do a million things to make sure you don't steal Peggy's spotlight. You don't have to miss out on paying your final respects and saying goodbye just because the media is full of vultures." 

"Last respects?" Asked Steve. He shook his head. "I'm never going to stop respecting her, and as for goodbyes. I've said hello and goodbye to her more times than I can count. I've...I think I've made peace already. Or something close to it."

"Rogers, your eyes are still red." Natalia pointed out. 

"Who ever said peace meant no tears? I didn't say I wasn't sad, that I don't miss her already. All I'm saying is, I've known this has been coming for a long time. I've been ready." 

"You only think you've been." Said Bucky. Steve looked over at him with surprise, then confusion. Bucky pressed forth. "You think you've been ready to say goodbye to her forever, you think that every time you said goodbye at the end of those visits you were also saying goodbye forever, just in case. But you haven't, Steve. I know you haven't because I used to say goodbye to you and everyone else every time we went into battle or initiated an operation. And you did the same back then; I know you did. But when I fell, did all those so-called goodbyes mean anything? Did they make it any less painful? No. When I was laying in that snow and ice, waiting to die, I kept wishing I was in a movie or a book. Because in books and movies, characters get to say final goodbyes in the arms of their loved ones and comrades. I had said goodbye and supposedly made my peace before so many missions and in so many letters to my family, but I still wished I could say it one more time to each of you. I would have died regretting not saying goodbye one more time. Steve, you always need one more goodbye." 

"He's right, Steve." Said Sam. "I did the same thing with Riley. Before every op, I thought I'd made peace with the fact I may lose him that day, I thought I had made every goodbye count. But I still wished that I could say goodbye one more time right after I lost him. It wasn't until the funeral that I really felt any semblance of peace over losing him." 

"But I want this to be about Peggy and her family." Steve protested. 

"Not going will take just as much attention away as going will. The media is full of vultures just like Sam said." Said Natalia. "We'll make sure that your presence doesn't cause a circus. Stark will probably go too, and he loved her like an aunt apparently. If he can go without an uproar, so can you." 

Hesitantly, Steve conceded defeat. 

* * *

 

Bucky contemplated not going, but considering the speech he, Sam, and Nat gave, he decided it would be hypocritical and didn't protest when Steve announced that Stark and Banner wanted to fit him with a disguiso-mesh sleeve for the funeral, since gloves probably wouldn't cut it this close to summer. He also finally got his hair cut. On Natalia's orders, not Stark's. On Tuesday night, Bucky and Steve took a taxi to JFK where Stark's private plane was waiting to fly them, Stark, Natalia, and Sharon and some of her family to London. Upon arriving, they found Natalia waiting outside the plane, already in full disguise. Her hair was dyed black and she had glasses on. She looked a lot like a librarian. 

"Say goodbye to your hair, Goldilocks." She greeted Steve.

Steve furrowed his brow warily. "What?" She tossed him a box of brown hair dye. She then stepped forward and took hold of his chin. She gave it a quick appraisal and then backed off again, leaving Steve and Bucky both a bit bewildered. "Good, you didn't shave like I asked you to. Keep it up and by Thursday you'll hardly be recognizable." She announced, before setting her sights on Bucky. She gave him a quick up and down. "Your hair's okay but I'm probably going to put some makeup on you the day of so you don't look so...Bucky Barnes. Sharon and I talked and you're going to pretend to be her boyfriend if anyone asks." 

Bucky quirked an eyebrow. "You decided this without asking me?" 

"Yes." Natalia answered simply. She turned on her heel and marched onto the plane.

Sharon appeared suddenly on scene with a gray-haired couple, her own clone, and two little kids in tow. Sharon approached them with a subdued smile. 

"Hey, guys." She greeted them. "I'm glad you both decided to come." 

Steve didn't say anything to that. Instead he asked if the people standing a few feet behind her in with own morose bubble were her family. 

"Yeah, that's my mom and dad, and my sister and her kids." 

"Your dad is Peggy's nephew, right?" Bucky inquired. Sharon nodded. "Yeah, he is." She turned her attention back to Steve with a nervous expression. "Would you, would you like to meet him? He's actually kind of a big fan." She said. Steve said sure and Sharon called her dad over. All her family came instead. She looked kind of embarrassed by that and Steve and Bucky gave her sympathetic looks. 

Mr. Carter beamed and shook Steve's hand like he was having a seizure. "Mr. Rogers, it's such an honor to meet you. My name is George Carter." He greeted him in an English accent not too different from Peggy's. "Aunt Peg used to talk about you all the time. Oh, this is my wife Liz." A fifty year-old version of Sharon stepped forward with a shy smile. "Hello, Captain Rogers." She said in a southern drawl. Finally Sharon's sister (Kathy, she introduced herself as) stepped forward along with her kids, Andrew and Olivia. Andrew was too tired to pay Steve much mind besides a hello, but Olivia grinned like mad as she was introduced. 

Bucky watched them chatter on for a moment, going through the usual pleasantries and of course lamenting the circumstances. Abruptly, however, Liz turned to Bucky and said, "You must be Blake." Bucky was thankful for his programming then. He didn't even blink at the sudden declaration. Sharon gave him a discreet pitying look. "Yeah, that's me. Nice to meet you, Mr. & Mrs. Carter." He replied with a smile. He shook George and Liz's hands and flashed a smile at Kathy and the kids. Sharon linked arms with him as they all went to board the plane. 

"Sharon tells us you work with her at the CIA." George commented. "I guess you can't tell us much about your job then. Aside from pay grade of course! That's certainly not confidential!" George and Liz laughed as their daughters cringed. Steve and Bucky forced smiles. The awkward conversation lasted up until takeoff, which wasn't too much of a misfortune actually because it gave Steve and Bucky an excuse not to talk to Stark. Once they were up in the air, everyone on the plane splintered. Sharon and Natalia formed a triad with Pepper at the back of the plane, George and Liz settled in with their grandkids to try and sleep, Kathy disappeared into the galley, and Steve and Bucky settled down for the flight in seats not so close to Stark as to have to socialize too much, but not so far away as to antagonize. 

One hour in, Stark leaned over and asked, "Are you going to make a speech?" 

When Steve shook his head, Stark nodded approvingly. "Good. I just got a text from Dennis; he's trying to keep everything focused on Peg. If either one of us tries to make a spee--"

"I know." Steve quickly interjected. Stark had a sour expression but didn't say anything. For once. The loss of his "aunt" had dulled his sharp tongue some apparently. 

Forty minutes passed before Stark said another word to either of them. "Hey, Cap. Do you even know the names of any of the people who are going to be there?" He asked. 

Steve really didn't want to answer, Bucky could see. Ever since he'd come back, Stark and Steve hadn't gotten along as well as they had been before. Things got even worse when the Superhuman Registration Act was introduced. Bucky felt a sudden pang of guilt but he shoved it away. "No, not really." Steve admitted. "I never really got the chance to meet them, and no one really ever wanted the responsibility of lecturing the human ice cube on what his girlfriend and former comrade had been up to since he died." 

"Well, here's the thing: the Carter-Dugan family is just as fucked up as any other." Stark stated bluntly. "Sorry if it hurts to hear that not even Peggy Carter could find a short cut around dysfunction junction, but it's the truth." 

Steve regarded Stark dubiously. From the back of the plane, Pepper and Sharon looked on with concern. Natalia looked on with mistrust. "What do you mean, Stark?" Asked Steve. 

"I mean that you should have heads up going into this that just because this is Peggy and Dum Dum's family doesn't mean these people are perfect. They have problems just like any other. Also, don't expect to find a Peggy doppelganger. Or a Dum Dum 2.0. These people are all their own." 

"I wasn't. I knew that already, Stark." 

"Whatever you say, Cap. It's just fair warning."

Moments later, Sharon called them back of the plane. They tagged out with Pepper and Natasha, who took their old seats near Stark at the front of the plane. Once situated, Sharon beckoned them closer, forming a conspiratory bubble. "Do you have any clue about my family?" She asked. "At all? Names at least, surely." 

Bucky and Steve both shook their heads regretfully. Sharon heaved a deep sigh. "I guess you're due for a crash course then. Settle in; it'll take awhile to teach you even a fraction of what I've learned over the course of thirty years of family reunions." The remainder of the flight that wasn't spent sleeping was spent learning about Peggy's family, from her children to her grandchildren to her great-grandchildren and all the in-laws and cousins in-between. Stark hadn't been exaggerating, unfortunately. Sharon confirmed that the Carter-Dugan family had its fair share of troubles and gave Steve and Bucky fair warning of the potential landmines they could stumble upon in the coming days. 

Feuding, alcoholism, sociopolitical discord, taboo subjects; they had it all. 

Dennis, the alcoholic uncle who was way too extroverted at barbecues and sometimes showed baby-boomer tendencies that annoyed the crap out of anyone born 1980 on wards. His wife Julie, the beloved _smother_ who was really trying hard to be accepting and supportive but still makes her gay son and his husband uncomfortable. 

Angela, the workaholic whose marriage was falling apart and feels immense guilt for it and drowns herself in wine in her little free time because her inferiority complex prevents her from cutting back on her hours at the office. Keith, the long emotionally divorced spouse who is always a fingernail's width from necking a waitress in a supply closet but has yet to for all Sharon knows because he feels just as at fault for the terribleness of his marriage as his wife. 

Amy, the one normal aunt that was a beacon of hope for all her nieces and nephews in their youth. Michael, the hard ass who is total mush when it comes to his wife and _only_ his wife and whose children have been soldiers first in his mind since they were old enough to call him "sir". 

Tara and Justin, the eternally feuding brother and sister who ended up on opposite ends of every spectrum in existence, from sexuality to politics to economics. 

Rose and Lisa, the resentful children who are constantly debating exactly how poor of a job their parents did with their willingly amnesiac sister Elizabeth. 

Joel, Tricia, and Kelly--the good cop with medals and awards from the city that he never shuts up about, the bad cop who has had multiple "incidents" involving excessive force that no one is allowed to talk about, and the court bailiff who cosplays on weekends, much to her siblings' and parents' embarrassment. 

By the time the plane touched down, Bucky was wrought with anxiety over the supposed circus he was about to encounter. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Peggy & Dum Dum's children:  
> Dennis "The Menace" Dugan, married Julie Morita  
> Angela "Angie" Rand nee Dugan, married Keith Rand  
> Amelia "Amy" Page nee Dugan, married Michael Page  
> Grandchildren:  
> Tara & Justin Dugan (by Dennis)  
> Rose, Elizabeth, & Lisa (by Angela)  
> Joel, Tricia, & Kelly Page (by Amy)  
> Grandchildren-in-law:  
> Enzo Triplett (through Tara)  
> Craig McFarland (through Justin)  
> Michael "Mikey" Stewart (through Elizabeth)  
> Great-Grandchildren:  
> Margaret "Madge" Triplett (by Tara & Enzo)  
> Angela "Angie" Stewart (by Elizabeth & Mikey)


	10. Collage

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> disclaimer: I own nothing.

They checked in at their hotel around 11 PM under a variety of pseudonyms. Steve under Grant Evans and Bucky under Blake Adler. Natalia fell back on one of her Cold War era guises, Maria Christensen. Tony & Pepper checked in under Anthony and Ginny Potts, which weren't even really pseudonyms but worked well enough thanks to some hefty bribes to hotel management not to blab to the media. The Carter family didn't bother with false names, but they were civvies so...It was a bit funny though to watch Sharon struggle against her secret agent instincts as she signed her _real_ name and gave her  _real_ information to the clerk. She probably hadn't done that at a hotel in years.

After checking in, Stark took Pepper's hand and led her into the lounge to have a drink and see the act that was playing. Some folk group by the sound of the snippets that floated into the lobby. Sharon's parents soon followed, though not without asking their daughters to join.

"Some sherry for my Sharry. Come on." George cajoled. "This might be our only chance to have a nice sit down while we're here, just the four of us, and we haven't spoken in so long." Sharon sheepishly turned him down.

"I'm going to head up and help Kathy unpack." She said.

"What about you, Blake?" Asked Liz, turning to Bucky. "Please have a drink with us. Someone has to let us know what our daughter's up to. _She_ certainly won't." Liz shot her younger daughter a sharp look.

Bucky stroked his chin thoughtfully. "I could go for some scotch. Last time I was in London, I didn't see so much of it for all you Brits like to brag." Sharon's face...if looks could kill. Not wishing to die young (in a sense), Bucky shook his head and faked a lion-like yawn. "Nah, sorry, Mrs. Carter. I'm beat. I'll go ahead up to bed."

George and Liz nodded understandingly and then tried to invite Steve and "Miss Christensen" but they both politely turned them down as well. Everyone was a little relieved when the couple disappeared into the lounge after Stark and Pepper.

"Goodnight, _Sharry_ ," Bucky teased Sharon with an awful older-brother grin. Sharon punched his arm, unflinching as her knuckles collided with the thin layer of mesh disguising his metal arm. Bucky gave it a rub for show as he extended a far politer goodnight to "Miss Christensen", Kathy, and her kids. "I'll be heading up to my room now." He announced as he turned towards the elevators.

"Don't you need the key from Sharon?" Kathy blurted out. 

Sharon and Bucky exchanged lightning-quick glances. The Winter Soldier hadn't gone on ops with a partner since the sixties, since before Zola got him back from the Russians, so Bucky could only hope that his eyes properly communicated his thoughts to Sharon. In less than three seconds, he and Sharon both refocused their attention on Kathy.

"I'm a Catholic." Bucky lied unflinchingly. 

"A very devout one, in fact." Sharon added, leveling her sister with a very meaningful look. Kathy's cheeks burned cherry red.

"Oh, I'm sorry." She muttered as Andrew and Olivia asked what the big deal about "Blake" being Catholic was. Kathy hushed them as she hustled them over to the elevators. She bid them all a hasty goodnight as the doors closed.

Bucky and Sharon burst out laughing the soonest they could. 

"I can't believe that worked!" Sharon managed between guffaws. 

"I know! I didn't think that would work--no one seems to even bother with the _illusion_ of virginity nowadays." Bucky looked over to see Steve looking supremely unimpressed with the two of them, sending Bucky into another fit. "Oh don't look like that, Steve." He said when he was finally finished (for the most part). "It's not like I went on some spiel about Jesus Christ and chastity and saving myself for marriage lest I burn in Hell along with all the other pre-marital-sex-having harlots in Brooklyn." 

"My aunt Shauna did that  _one_ time, Bucky." Steve grumbled with a telling smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

"Twice! _At least._ " Bucky countered, holding up two fingers an inch from Steve's nose. "Once when your cousin...I don't know, something about a boy from Vinegar Hill or somewhere up that way, and another time when I let it slip at Sunday dinner that you had a crush on my neighbor Ruth, or Rose...Something with an 'r'. She must have rehearsed it because it was fucking verbatim, I think. Was it?" Bucky asked. It would bother him for hours, maybe even days if he didn't get an answer. 

"Yeah, about. I wouldn't put it past her to have practiced it in the mirror each morning." Steve confirmed with a low, nostalgic chuckle. "She always did like to make a show of her, uh, 'Christ-y-ness', I think your mom called it."

Bucky snorted at that. It certainly  _sounded_ like something his mom would say. He thought, at least...

"I can't believe I'm saying this, but you two have _got_ to share more stories about the 'good old days'." Sharon interjected. 

"Just leave out the junk about the Brooklyn Dodgers, how much better your bananas were, and Hoovervilles." Added Natalia. 

"Well then," Steve said in an exaggerated offended tone, like a soccer mom whose son's coach finally let her in on the big secret her kid wasn't the next Lionel Messi. "What's there left to talk about?!" He demanded. Natalia stifled her laugh with a broader-than-usual smirk, but Bucky and Sharon let themselves laugh freely while they had the chance. Tomorrow it wouldn't be so easy. 

* * *

The next morning, everyone met up for breakfast in the hotel dining room. It was a pretty swanky place, the hotel, so it wasn't just a bunch of circular tables and a buffet. There were reserved tables with cream colored table clothes, fine, actually-silver-silverware, pretty pink flower arrangements in the center of each table and menus with fancy black font on expensive paper. Bucky and Steve were early birds by nature so they were among the first to arrive, only beat out by Natalia and Sharon's mom of all people. 

"Everything just sounds so delicious." Liz commented as she browsed the menu. "I just don't know where to start." She paused and glanced around the table, likely waiting for some response. Bucky didn't really know what to say, and neither did Natalia or Steve seemingly, from the way they tried to act like they were too absorbed in their own menus to have heard Mrs. Carter. Liz drooped as she folded up her menu in her lap. "I'll just have some eggs and a biscuit. It wouldn't be appropriate to eat like I'm on vacation anyways." She said as she folded her hands in her lap over the menu.

"I think I'll get the Swiss scrambled eggs and a homemade blueberry muffin." Natalia declared, putting aside her menu as well. "And fresh-squeezed orange juice." 

"The quiche Lorraine sounds good to me, and I guess I'll have juice too." Steve announced dully, following Natalia's lead. Bucky hastily declared he'd have the hot cakes and a cup of coffee. 

With no menus to distract them, they were all forced to try and make idle conversation in front of Liz without involving robots, HYDRA, the KGB, the Cold War, WWII, supersoldiers or superspies, or Mario Kart. Of course the conversation turned to the most obvious subject at hand. 

"So today will be the memorial service for the public, right?" Asked Natalia. Though she was surely aware of every item on their itinerary down to scheduled bathroom breaks while site-seeing.  

Liz looked up from her hands with some surprise at finally being acknowledged but recovered quickly and gave a solemn nod. "Yes, yes; there's a park here in London that Peg used to play in as a child--Georgie used to play in it too when he was little. Anyways, Dennis and Amy are probably there right now making sure everything gets set up right. There's going to be a tent with chairs for all the family and friends who are still around and could make it. None of the Commandos except Falsworth unfortunately. He'll be speaking, I think. Along with some old SSR servicemen and some sort of official who'll dedicate a tree to her in the park. Strangers are welcome, of course, but really this is just sort of practice for the actual funeral tomorrow." Liz explained. 

"It sounds really nice." Said Steve. Looking over, Bucky saw how his hand squeezed tightly around his old compass in his lap. Peggy's picture was inside, he recalled. 

"After the memorial, there's going to be a dinner. Sharon mentioned it on the plane." Bucky spoke up.

"Yes, at the Restaurant Gordon Ramsay." Liz confirmed. "It's short notice but Angela has connections. COO of Roxxon Corp and all, whatever that is exactly."

It was only for a split second, but Natalia startled at Liz's words. She cast Steve a meaningful look that he returned without Liz noticing. Bucky made note to keep an eye on Angela at the memorial.

"Angela's been able to pull a lot of this together thanks to that job of hers. Roxxon seems really eager to flex their muscles and help us out." Liz scoffed. "They're more see-through than windows, aren't they? I hope their stomachs are churning at how they're taking advantage of a national icon's death." 

"Me too, Mrs. Carter." Natalia commented, once again exchanging a meaningful look with Steve. 

Everyone else arrived in the next few minutes, starting with Pepper and Sharon and ending with George. Roxxon Corp and Peggy's memorial were mostly forgotten in favor of a nice breakfast and small talk that was actually welcome in light of recent events. Bucky was sort of grateful he did all of his and Steve's grocery shopping the last six months, because it turned out to be great training for faking his way through an equal parts lengthy and awkward conversation with Liz and George about his and Sharon's "relationship". It was kind of funny really, how similar conversations with soccer moms and baby-boomers could be.

It started getting a bit mind-numbing towards the end, sure, but Andrew and Olivia were sweet kids and welcome distractions for everyone at the table when they asked about Stark's suits, Steve's shield, and the other Avengers. It was only a  _little_ painful when they started asking Steve about Bucky Barnes, who was apparently their favorite character on some Saturday morning cartoon. 

After breakfast, everyone returned to their rooms to get dressed for the memorial. Steve and Bucky were ready relatively quickly and still had an hour to spare before the cars arrived at the hotel when they finished up. Seeing as how they were alone, Bucky kicked up his feet on the coffee table in the living area of their two-bedroom suite and asked about Roxxon Corp. Steve was reluctant to answer.

"It's something we've been looking into." He said at first. 

Bucky set his jaw. "SHIELD?" He asked low and serious. 

"SHIELD." Steve confessed, equally so. 

"Don't tell me Peggy's daughter is working for A.I.M or HYRDA or Putin." Bucky groaned, rolling back and shoving his face into a throw pillow. 

"Liz said she was COO. Being in charge of general operations, it's...possible." Steve admitted. 

"How does that happen?" Bucky asked, springing up from the couch. 

"How does a worldwide security agency become a front for Neo-Nazi terrorists?" 

"Touché. Except are we really talking about HYDRA or are we talking about general dickishness from a business too big for its breeches?" 

"Roxxon Corp has been on SHIELD's radar for years. It's an oil company, officially, but they're involved in some shady stuff. They go way beyond government lobbying. The fact no one has been arrested or even officially investigated is astounding." Steve explained. 

"Shady stuff?"  

"They had a hand in a few dozen assassinations of politicians and the executives of rival companies. According to some old files, there was a time when they were at the top of the list of suspects in both President Kennedy and...and Howard's assassinations. When they were cleared, SHIELD was actually shocked. And..."

"And?" Bucky pressed. 

"For the last three months, the CEO and other executives have been seen out and about, playing golf and having fancy dinners, all with one man. He goes by the name Edward Kline, and he supposedly represents a small oil company in Russia that's looking to sell. We're still in the process of trying to confirm this, but Wanda identified him as Aleksander Lukin, the new leader of HYRDA, thought dead up until recently."

"So what you're trying to say is that Peggy's daughter might be working for an evil shadow corporation with ties to the even eviler HYRDA." Bucky felt a headache coming on. His eyes wandered over to his Starkpad on the coffee table. He swiped it up and turned it on. "Fuck it. I need some laughingly bad mommy porn." He grumbled under his breath. 

"That can't be good for your health." Steve snarked weakly. 

"Well neither can having dinner with my torturers' business partner." Bucky spat as chapter three of  _Fifty Shades of Grey_ loaded.

"Bucky, she's Peggy and Dum Dum's _daughter_." Steve chastised him. 

Bucky shot Steve the most venomous look he could muster against his best friend. "Fuck you, Steve. Fuck you and that logic. I don't care _whose_  daughter she is. If this woman is willingly associating with fucking _HYDRA_ , family ties go out the window, and you know for a fact Peggy would agree. If Peggy were around to hear this shit, she'd probably drag her daughter's ass into the interrogation room herself."

Steve flinched at his words and Bucky found himself quickly draining of all anger in the face of his friend's wounded expression. He felt the urge to apologize a hundred times for putting such a look on his best friend's face but he didn't because he knew he was in the right and he couldn't let go of that, even for Steve.

"I don't know if this is because of Peggy's death, but you had to have known before today that Roxxon's COO was Peg's daughter. Please, Steve, please tell me that you haven't been going easy on this just because someone who's related to Peggy is involved. This could be our big chance to snuff out HYDRA before they fully regroup and I won't believe you passed up that chance because..."  _Because you're still in love with some corporate big shot's mom, because Peggy's daughter being fucking evil is unthinkable, because that would be a stain on the idealized versions of Peggy and Dum Dum that you cooked up in your nostalgia and loneliness._ Bucky didn't dare say any of those things aloud. 

"Of course not." Said Steve. His tone really didn't offer up much assurance if any at all. 

"Steve, you have to be honest. You haven't, have you?" 

"I haven't, Buck." Steve said, this time with more conviction. "Like Nat would let me."

Bucky managed a small smile at that. He'd raised that one well. Still, his anxiety remained.

"Then why hasn't this been confirmed? Natalia's told me that SHIELD has identified and taken dictators out in less than a week based on satellite imagery and DNA from saliva on the rims of coffee cups."

"Like you said, this could our big chance to snuff out HYDRA, or at least set them back by miles. We can't afford to be wrong and tip Lukin off that we're on his tail."

"But you have Wanda's confirmation." Bucky pointed out. "That man was in charge of turning her and her brother into human weapons. She _knows_ what he looks like, Steve."  

"SHIELD isn't working directly under the government anymore, Bucky. We don't have the US backing us and can't rely on them to vouch for us and our actions if we level twenty city blocks during a battle or take out the wrong guy. We have to build a strong case so that if we do turn out wrong about this guy we can reasonably defend ourselves." Steve argued. He laid a hand on Bucky's shoulder as he sat down on the couch next to him. "Listen, it won't take long. Right now, Coulson and his agents are investigating Edward Kline and his supposed oil company as well as Roxxon Corp's C-cabinet. That includes Angela." 

Bucky cracked a genuine grin. "Does that mean I'll be seeing Jemma at the punch bowl later?" 

"Yeah, maybe." Said Steve with a little grin of his own.

* * *

The park was so small that the tent took up about half of it, but then again, it was a pretty big tent. Half the seats inside were filled when their lot arrived. They'd only just climbed out of their cabs when a portly man with grey and ginger hair emerged from the tent with an Asian woman. Bucky assumed they were Julia Morita and Dennis Dugan. 

"George, Liz, great to finally see you." Dennis greeted Sharon's parents. George pulled his cousin into a bear hug, the two men's bellies competing for breathing room all the while as their wives shared a much more comfortable embrace. Then they switched off, and finally the Dugans turned their attentions to Sharon, Kathy, and the kids. 

"Uh, Uncle Dennis, this is my boyfriend Blake Adler, he's my plus one. And this is Maria Christensen. She's a journalist; Mr. Stark and Miss Potts trust her a lot." Sharon introduced Bucky and Natalia.

Bucky flashed a smile and shook Dennis and Julia's hands, all the while trying his damnedest to ignore the strong resemblances to their parents. Dennis looked like the older Dum Dum that Bucky never got to see in person, only in photographs. The same smile-lines and receding hairline, the almond shaped eyes. The only major differences were his brown eyes, inherited from Peggy, and the fact that as far as Bucky knew Dum Dum never let himself go like that. Julia looked as much like her father as her gender would allow. Unlike her father, however, Julia had prominent smile-lines, and her hair was cut like Kris Jenner's. 

"And this is..." Sharon trailed off uncomfortably as she gestured to Steve. Bucky wondered briefly if she was feigning discomfort and shyness so not to let onto her family she was a chip right off the Carter block, or if she genuinely felt weird about the connection between Steve and her family. 

Dennis and Julia looked between Sharon and Steve with confusion before carefully examining Steve, the man underneath the brown hair dye and new facial hair. There was a dawning moment of realization and then two awkward hand shakes and nervous smiles as Dennis and Julia apologized and babbled for a moment about it being an honor to finally meet him, and how their parents used to talk about him, and how they hated that their first meeting had to be like this. 

"It's okay, honestly." Steve lied. "And I'm just as glad to meet you guys finally." That was only half a lie. 

There was an awkward beat before Stark swooped in from wherever he'd been hiding the last five minutes and hugged Julia and Dennis. 

"It's good to see you, Dennis." Said Stark in a cheery tone of voice no one else had yet managed.

"Same, Tony." Replied Dennis, looking Stark up and down. He let out a laugh. "Why do I still do that? It's not like you've grown any since college."

"Honey, he stopped growing  long before that." Said Julia.

"Old habits die hard, I suppose." Said Stark. "Plus you always were a little insecure about your title as king of the jungle gym. Hey, speaking of which, has Justin finally dethroned you?" 

"Bah! Never gonna happen!" Dennis declared. As if sensing the shit-talking, a man who had to be Justin appeared alongside another guy who had to be his husband, Craig McFarland. 

"We need to put him in a home, ma. He's clearly delusional." Justin joked to his mother.

Julie laughed unabashedly at her husband's expense and agreed. At the sight of Craig, however, she immediately went rigid. "Craig, sweetheart, I'm so glad you decided to come along." Steve and Bucky both watched with discomfort as Julie encroached on Craig's personal space and Justin's body language became guarded. Everyone else in the vicinity except for Dennis seemed to be having the same feelings. "I know it's a somber occasion, but I was thinking that you, me, and the kids could all go out and see the sights later." Craig seemed to relax a bit. "Buckingham Palace, that church where William and Kate got married, 221B Baker Street, and, oh, that shrine to Freddie Mercury of course." That last bit had Craig immediately back on the defensive and Justin stepped in. 

"Ma, I don't think that's appropriate." He whispered to Julie.

"I...I didn't mean to, dear, I just wanted to--"

"This isn't exactly a normal vacation, ma."

Julie was horrifically embarrassed and fled back inside the tent. 

Dennis scowled at his son and son-in-law. "Look at what you've done. She was just tryin' to be considerate of you two." He chastised them. 

Justin sighed and shook his head. "Dad, we know, but that's not the right way to go about it. I mean, Freddie Mercury, really?" 

"I thought he was supposed to be some patron saint of your lot?" There was no malice in his words, but Justin and Craig were still obviously annoyed at Dennis. Rather than picking a fight at a memorial service, they too retreated back into the tent. Dennis was left looking terribly confused but shrugged it off quickly, remarking to George and Stark that Justin and Craig were just sensitive. 

"Let's say hi to everyone else." Suggested Stark, thankfully defusing the tension some with a few quips about that went over Dennis and George's heads. "I haven't seen anyone since before Iron Man. This is a great opportunity, Pepper, you'll love Angela's kids and Amelia." There was pointedly no mention of liking Angela herself, so Bucky concluded that Stark had a much harsher opinion of Peggy's daughter as of late than Steve. He commended the man for not pulling punches. 

Inside the tent were over a dozen members of the press and a colorful assortment of friends and family filling the rows of folding chairs. At the front was a podium, hundreds of flowers, and a giant collage made up of pictures of Peggy through the years. While Stark, Sharon, and her family mingled easily with the other guests, Steve slipped over to the collage. When Bucky managed to disentangle himself from the aunts and cousins who wanted to meet Blake, he joined his friend's side. 

The pictures faded artfully into one another. Black-and-white to dull brown sepia to the saturated colors of the 60s and 70s to the finally the vivid, clear images of the modern era. In the upper left corner of the collage was a little wallet-sized picture of a toddler posed in her mother's lap. Her hair was chopped short, a sharp contrast against her frilly dress, and she looked ready to claw her way off her mother's lap any second. From there, observers of the collage could watch that toddler grow up into a scrappy little girl. Peggy with pigtails and shorts with her knee-high socks falling down and bunching at her ankles. Peggy doing a handstand with her older brother holding her ankles, with no care of her skirt falling down. Peggy blowing kisses at the camera. Peggy sipping soda on a front stoop with other little girls. Peggy plastered against her father's side as he stood in his service uniform, minus the hat which Peggy herself wore. Peggy riding on the handlebars of a bike, obscuring the face of the driver. Peggy laid up in a hospital bed with a broken arm and leg. Peggy smiling directly at the camera with a grin so broad it must have hurt, her eyes crinkled up, her hair wet in her face, brandishing a medal triumphantly.

That little girl soon became a strong young woman. Peggy at her high school graduation, Peggy in her first service uniform, Peggy and her brother holding up targets each with all the holes concentrated at the bull's eye. Peggy sitting up in bed with a terrible bed head and an arm reaching out to hide her face from the camera. Peggy smiling across a table as she unabashedly enjoyed a sandwich. Peggy holding a picket sign at a rally. Peggy climbing out of a manhole. Peggy standing side by side with Howard, Colonel Philips, Dr. Erskine, and about two dozen others who would have a hand in the super-soldier serum experiment. 

There was only one picture of her and Steve. It was a candid of them sitting at a table together down in the bunkers. Not strategizing, not poring over piles of paperwork, not eating a romantic dinner, but sharing some Irish coffee while Steve sketched on a notepad in front of him and Peggy chowed down on a can of spam with a spoon. Her lipstick was all smudged, she had been caught licking the corner of her mouth, and her hair was in a bun. Steve was down to his dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and his hands were gloved in graphite dust. The picture was almost certainly Howard's doing. 

After the war were pictures of Peggy with a light-haired woman who looked sort of delicate, and then a different woman in a waitress uniform who looked feisty. Howard and Dum Dum started to show up a lot as well, along with a prim and proper looking guy. Eventually, Tony's mother Maria entered the pictures. Peggy and the waitress on the beach. Peggy and Dum Dum with their arms thrown around each other's shoulders, covered in dirt and what was likely explosive residue. Peggy and Howard posing with generals and presidents and foreign dignitaries. Peggy and Maria holding a trophy in tennis playing outfits while Dum Dum and Howard moped off to the side. Peggy pressing a kiss to the cheek of the prim and proper guy along with the waitress. Peggy pressing a kiss to the cheek of the prim and proper guy along with Howard. Peggy standing at Howard's side at his and Maria's wedding. Peggy at her own wedding to Dum Dum, surrounded by faces both familiar and unfamiliar to Bucky. 

There were dozens of pictures after that epitomizing the mother and grandmother that so many inside the tent were mourning. Peggy holding a baby Dennis. A little girl pressing a fat kiss against Peggy's cheek. Peggy sitting on the couch on Christmas morning watching her children open their gifts in a bathrobe with horrendous bedhead and a cup of coffee. Peggy watching her children do all the things she did and more. Peggy still climbing out of manholes and shaking hands with presidents and beating Howard and Dum Dum at tennis and attending rallies. Peggy at her retirement party, surrounded by more unfamiliar faces than familiar ones, smiling sadly. Peggy, wrinkled and silver-haired, sitting with a bald and overweight Dum Dum on a couch on Christmas morning watching their grandchildren open their gifts. In the lower right corner of the collage was a small wallet-sized picture of an old woman laid up in a hospital bed, gazing out the window at the cloudless blue sky of D.C. The light caught her hair just right, and her smile was reassuring. 

For the first time, Bucky felt he had actually known Peggy Carter, and he missed her. 

"Steve, I," Bucky began. Steve shook his head and patted him on the shoulder. 

"I'm fine, Buck." He said, smiling at Bucky. "I'm glad, really. That she had such a full life, I mean." 

They both turned back to the collage and silently agreed. However, for all that he was glad to see that someone from his past that had escaped the suffering and shadows of the war, Bucky could not help but feel jealous. It wasn't a new feeling. 

"Excuse me? Blake?" Steve and Bucky turned towards the inquiry and immediately stiffened with shock when they found themselves face to face with a woman who looked frightfully similar to Peggy. Fortunately for their nerves, it took only a bare minute to recognize the differences between the women. Dugan blood ran through this woman's veins. Her face was a collage of Peggy and Dum Dum's. She smiled a stiff, anxious smile and stuck out a hand. "I'm a cousin of Sharon's, Angela." She introduced herself, and it took all Bucky had to plaster on a cordial smile and shake her proffered hand. 


	11. In Memory Of...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Angela was a drawn bow-string, taut and threatening to snap and unleash havoc any second. Not because she was the violent type, Bucky could tell, but because she had been holding in _everything_ for years and years. He wondered if loosening that tight bun on the top of her head would relieve some of the pressure, like turning the valve on a boiler. Moreover, Bucky wondered what had Angela more stressed: her unhappy marriage, her resentful children, her inferiority complex, or working for Evil Inc. The next to last one, at the very least, might be relieved some now that the source of her complex had been reduced to ash. Then again, perhaps her mother's death would only make things worse. 

Angela treated Blake cordially, telling him she was glad to meet Sharon's boyfriend and eager to get to know him, and acted like a devout worshiper towards Steve. Her brother had let her in on the big secret, she whispered with a hand next to her mouth. The attempt at a playful gesture fell flat with her thin, worried eyebrows all furrowed up like they were. She was trying so hard, and it was so obvious, and it was so painful to watch.

"Mom and Dad always talked about you." Angela burst out too loudly in her awkwardness. "They only knew you for a few years, but they told us a million stories." Her soft brown eyes shone with bitter memories even as she smiled. Bucky began to put a picture together in his head and felt a sudden pang of sympathy towards Peggy's daughter. Then she handed Steve her business card and all that sympathy was lost. It was a benign little square of paper for the most part, with her married name in bold navy print in the center, underlined by a phone number, office address, and email in smaller font. It was completely ambivalent, aside from the Roxxon Corp logo looming large and in charge over Angela's name like a red umbrella of evil. 

As if on cue, and who was Bucky kidding there probably was a cue, Natalia and Sharon swooped in. Miss Christensen had some questions for the COO of Roxxon Corp and Sharon wanted to be the one to show Blake and _Grant--_ she hissed at Angela through her teeth _\--_ around the tent and introduce them to everyone. Angela nodded her head in a sort of anxious, disappointed way, like she was still in middle school and had just been brushed off by her crush.

When they were well away from Natalia and Angela, Sharon apologized. "She's always kind of weird when she's not at the office. If she ever was, she's not able to interact with people outside of a work setting anymore." Bucky imagined it was like flipping a switch. If he watched Angela take a work call, he knew he might not recognize the woman in front of him. Maybe her gray skin would gain some shred of color and her eyes would light up. Maybe she'd look like her mother. That thought pricked Bucky like a thorn; here he had been, examining a sad wilted flower only to be scorned by the reminder that Peggy's daughter of all people was in bed with an evil shadow corporation. 

"What's up with her?" Bucky demanded. Steve elbowed him for it but Bucky kept his eyes locked with Sharon's, wordlessly imploring her to tell him. He wanted every bit of information on his enemy as he could get his hands on. A vicious remnant of his past; even before the Soldier, Bucky had been fanatical about mission briefings. 

Sharon cast Steve an uncertain look and breathed deeply, bracing herself. The fact she was complying meant she thought this was important enough to overlook Steve's feelings. "My information may be biased, since I wasn't even a twinkle in my dad's eye back then and since Rose and Lisa aren't on the best terms with their mom so Elizabeth tries to compensate, but from what I've heard...Peggy wasn't the _greatest_ mom in the world sometimes. Especially towards Angela." Steve's shock was reserved but present. Bucky immediately regretted asking and might have told Sharon that was enough, but then Steve started sending the imploring looks. Sharon continued tentatively, feeling out the minefield as she went. "I kind of brushed over it on the plane, but Angela has always had this _thing_ ,apparently, about living up to some impossible expectations set for her by Peggy--and Uncle Tim, too, probably, but yeah, mostly Peggy. I've heard different things from different people about whether it was intentional or not, but my dad at least said that Peggy always had a problem about pushing Angela too hard. The fact that Dennis and Amelia naturally excelled in sports, academics, and just about anything else they set their minds to really didn't help matters. Angela, she made herself miserable when she was younger doing things she hated trying to impress her parents. I remember the trophies at her house: cheerleading, track & field, dance, karate, blue ribbons at the science fair, blue ribbons at the state fair,  _Harvard_ business school. She did it all but...I don't think Peggy went full-on Howard Stark on her but I have a feeling that she might not have realized how bad Angela felt about herself compared to Dennis, Amelia, and her super awesome glass-ceiling-breaking mom. And combine that with her and Uncle Tim being gone so often-" Sharon stopped because it was obvious to all three of them that no more needed said. Except for maybe one thing. "Just avoid Angela. She's a whole can of worms in of herself." 

To avoid a similar run-in to the one with Angela, Sharon took it upon herself to introduce _Grant_ to each person in the tent, some of whom had already been acquainted with Blake but Bucky wanted to stick close to Steve's side. First, Sharon properly introduced them to Justin and his husband Craig. Now that he really had a chance to take Justin in, Bucky found he looked a lot more like Dum Dum he had initially thought. Morita was definitely in him, no question, but that twinkle in his eye was all Dum Dum. Not to mention his size. Craig, on closer inspection, looked about ten years older than Justin. His curly black hair was graying at his temples and there were lines around his eyes. Bucky spent most of their interaction wondering what his ethnicity was, suspecting he was Jewish, only to find out towards the end of the conversation that Craig's family was adopted and had no clue what he was. Justin and Craig were neurosurgeons based out of Miami and oozed affluence and ego. Craig loved big words while Justin made pointed mentions of their luxurious house by the beach, their pure-bred mastiffs, and their personal judo instructor. He invited Steve to a sparring session, something that Sharon had already apparently turned down on his behalf and had rejected for herself about nineteen times. Steve made the diplomatic response that he'd consider it he ever found himself down in Florida.

Next came Justin's elder sister Tara and her little girl Madge. Tara was her mother with a haircut that didn't make waitresses wary and a scar on her chin from some childhood shenanigans. Madge's nut brown skin remained unblemished at three years old. Tara's husband Enzo would have come, but was tending to his grandfather Gabe Jones back in the states. According to Tara. According to Sharon, Enzo was in silent protest of the Avengers, anything and everything SHIELD-related really, since the death of his brother, Agent Antoine Triplett. Tara was a sweet person, however, and didn't want Steve to know that Gabe's grandson wanted nothing to do with him or Peggy or any other remnant of SHIELD. It made sense that such a kind person was a social worker and worked with so many charities. Tara asked Steve to participate and lend his name to about two dozen causes in the few minutes they spoke. She was only stopped by Madge's insistent demands of "up".

She was too little to know anything that was going on. That she'd lost a great-grandmother, or an uncle, or that her father and mother were both hurting a lot at the moment and being pulled in separate directions over it. She was too little to know anything. Yet when she looked at Bucky, Madge smiled gleefully, her dark eyes lighting up with recognition that shook Bucky to his core. It was then that he noticed the Bucky Bear she had in a strangle hold. It was impossible. Next to it, at the very least. Who would go around flashing his picture at a toddler? It wasn't like there was a picture of him up on the wall at her house...At one of her great-grandparents' houses, however...

Bucky jabbed Sharon in the ribs, urging her to move along before his cover was blown by a toddler. 

Before Sharon could find someone new to introduce them to, Sharon was found herself. "Sharry!" A woman exclaimed, bulldozing across the tent and through the crowd. "Amy!" Sharon exclaimed back. The two women embraced with broad smiles and high-pitched noises. Bucky quickly deduced that this was the single sane aunt so cherished by the younger generation of the Carter family. Amelia was the exact opposite of her elder sister, all flowing hair and flowing robes and flowing skirts and colorful patterns and musical bangles around her wrists. Her smile lines were prominent from decades of cheery nature and she embraced those decades, as made evident by her purely silver hair. She was a broad woman as her father had been a broad man, and nearly as tall as him as well. Her Dugan smile was emphasized by her red lipstick as her father's had been emphasized by his ginger mustache. 

"This that boy-toy I've been hearing about?" Amelia asked Sharon, eyeing Bucky up and down with appreciation. Bucky flushed and shifted his weight foot to foot while Steve grinned at him like a little shit. Sharon's aunt made him feel like a steak. Sharon sheepishly confirmed the romantic connection. 

"Military?" Amelia inquired right off the bat. 

"How'd ya know?" Bucky replied. He wondered briefly if she was a chip off the old stiletto-wearing, ass-kicking block like Sharon. He vaguely recalled Peggy's observant nature, a sharp contrast against her future husband.

Amelia looked over her shoulder and it was obvious she was indicating the man standing in full army uniform on the other side of the tent, radiating menace like some kind of grumpy furnace. He was shorter than Amelia with salt-and-pepper hair and a comb-shaped mustache. He looked too much like Jameson at  _The Daily Bugle_ for comfort, striking Bucky with fantasies of an old intrepid reporter getting back in the game and donning a poor disguise to land a juicy scoop on Cap and his lost lady love and her wacky family. Bucky quickly brushed the daydream off. The grumpy furnace was obviously Colonel Michael Page, Amelia's husband. 

Amelia turned back to Bucky and Sharon and asked, "So how long have you two been together? Not since before this past Christmas, surely." She gave her little cousin a meaningful look. Sharon gave her a reassuring smile and said that she and Blake had been together since January. Amelia then asked where they met and Sharon answered that they worked together at the CIA and that's all she'd ever know. Amelia laughed and asked if she'd ever know Blake's last name. This went on for sometime until Amelia cut one of Sharon's answers short and told her to give Blake a chance to speak. "Don't treat him like Mike treats Elizabeth." She whispered, which immediately had Sharon cowed and Bucky morbidly curious. 

She sent Bucky a single look silently asking if this was okay. Bucky nodded and answered Amelia's last question. "I'm a pretty private person, so you can't find me on social media. And sorry, but I don't see myself making an account just so members of Sharon's family can stalk me." He framed it as a joke as best he could, but Bucky feared it came off as too standoffish. He was rusty with his people skills. The Soldier never had to make small talk with a fake girlfriend's relatives. 

But Amelia nodded understandingly. She looked back over her shoulder; the colonel was still brooding on the other side of the tent. She sighed and went to join him with a soft goodbye to each of them. Not only was she was the first member of Sharon's family not to go gaga over Steve, but she didn't even acknowledge his presence. 

After Amelia, Sharon found Amelia's children. Joel was a blowhard even at his grandmother's memorial service and spent a solid ten minutes bragging to Steve about his own heroics during the Battle of New York. Still, he was mostly harmless and unoffensive. He talked to Blake and Steve like they'd been pals for years and noogied Sharon like a kid sister before moving along to spread tales of his heroism. Tricia was as high-strung as her aunt and as menacing as her father and was on the brink of an argument with Sharon from the moment they set eyes on one another. Then a switch seemed to be flipped, as Bucky had imagined with her aunt, and Tricia became as cordial as her mother towards her cousin and her cousin's boyfriend and--when she noticed Steve, she melted and started babbling. She might as well have changed her name to Brook. Trook soon fled to somewhere else inside the tent, blushing so hard that one could mistake her for the Red Skull; Bucky almost shouted for her to be careful of the WWII vets. Kelly was a chipper young woman several years younger than Joel and Tricia and all her other cousins. She gushed to Sharon about what she had been up to since they'd last seen each other at Christmas--mostly comic conventions--and turned as red as her sister did with Steve when introduced to Blake. That didn't mean that Kelly wasn't utterly enamored with Steve and didn't asked him a million questions mostly pertaining to his thoughts on his various portrayals in media. Before Sharon managed to pry him away, she hurriedly asked him if he'd be interested in guest-starring on a live stream for her Youtube channel. Steve laughingly replied that he'd think about it. 

They soon happened upon Rose and Lisa, Angela's eldest and youngest daughters respectively. Rose was a manicured woman with a cut-throat fashion haircut, stylish black glasses, and cheekbones you could grate cheese on. Lisa was very much the opposite, with tattoo sleeves and a breezy sundress. Her hair was a free mass of lovely strawberry red curls. Still, they were sisters, daughters of the same gray, taut woman. The sisters were both eerily pale and made up of sharp-angles like Angela. They had little fat to soften them. 

Their similarities ran deeper than one would have thought based on their differing senses of fashion. Things started off fine, with a pretty tame greeting from each sister. Rose asked after Sharon's career, especially in light of what had happened with SHIELD. Lisa spoke briefly on her time at BuzzFeed. When Steve remarked that they had met the girls' mother, however, all Hell broke loose. The Rand Sisters' sharp angles became razor-like edges. Rose's manicured nails seemed to become talon-like, the tips of her bob framing her face looked like you could prick your finger on them, and the shoulder-padding in her blazer threatened to tear away to reveal harpy wings. Rose's mass of red curls came to resemble flames threatening to lick the tent flaps and set the whole tent aflame. Her eye makeup served to accentuate her furious blue eyes which were swirling tempests of ice water onto themselves. Bucky half-expected a strong gust of wind and to see woodland critters fleeing for their lives.

"She makes _everything_ about her and her  _mommy issues_." Lisa seethed, and Bucky figured out very quickly that none of this anger was for them and what they might have suffered. This was for the sisters. The irony. " 'Mom and Dad talked about you a lot.' Ha, the hypocrite, always going on about 'your grandmother this' and 'your grandmother that' and 'what would grandma think'!" 

Rose's tone was much cooler than her sister's. "You know she doesn't even realize she's doing it. It's second nature for her to bring up Grandma and Grandpa." She looked to Blake and Steve, briefly including them. "That's the only way she knows how to interact with people. Outside of a board meeting, anyways." She turned back to her sister and said, "It's only going to get worse, too, now that she's dead. She never got that oh so precious maternal approval, so we're all fucked for the rest of eternity." 

Lisa rolled her eyes in an almost violent manner. "Why doesn't Angela just go to therapy?" Why don't you, Bucky wondered? He retracted that thought almost immediately; there he went again, sympathizing with the enemy. 

"The same reason she and Dad are still married. They don't want to admit to the world that they have serious problems by seeking professional help." Answered Rose. "So what's going to happen is they're either A, going to go on like this until Keith finally bangs one of his interns, divorces Angela, and marries a twenty-two year old, B, Angela gets bent over a desk by that Kline guy who's been sniffing around, divorces Keith, and ends up truly alone because there's no way Kline's sticking with her, or C, a murder-suicide." The frankness with which Rose spoke was truly bizarre. Halfway through, Sharon had started making attempts at ushering Steve and Bucky away from the sisters. She failed. They were too transfixed by the terrible things the sisters had to say about their own parents.

Bucky could only wonder, listening to the sisters' back-and-forth for several more minutes: What the Hell had been done to them growing up? 

Sharon answered that question later when she finally managed to pry the super-soldiers away from the subject of their morbid curiosity. Angela and Keith Rand truly did have a terrible marriage. Not the plates and harsh words volleyed across the room kind of terrible. Terrible in the sense that they had been happy once. "You see, there was this period of time--it seems mythical nowadays, but my parents and sister swear it happened--where Angela seemed to have gotten past all her problems with Peggy and Uncle Tim. It was from the time she graduated from Harvard, right up until Lisa was in diapers." Angela had met Keith at Harvard, and they married in their junior year. They had Rose a year after graduating so Angela was pretty much forced to be a stay-home mom, despite her plans. Turned out throwing her plans to the wind was the best thing she ever did; Angela apparently loved being a mom. All that validation she didn't feel like she was getting growing up, she gave to her daughter in spades, and was given it in turn in the form of crude crayon drawings and macaroni art. Even if the 70s and 80s hadn't kept Peggy insanely busy, Peggy apparently didn't exist for Angela at that time, she was _that_ unconcerned with her mother's approval. Then, when Lisa was two or three, something like that, Keith lost his job. Angela was forced to reenter the work force because the job Keith found after that wasn't enough to support the family; they _had_ to become a two-income household. But it was like any other addiction. Once Angela had it back in her system, she couldn't stop, and she hadn't. Not in over twenty years, to the despair of her family life. The only "good" thing that had come of Angela's obsession with proving herself to her mother had been her steady rise up the corporate ladder at Roxxon. 

"So, in short, they are the most fucked up branch of this family tree." Sharon summarized things under her breath. "I would say after Elizabeth and Mike, but they're kind of an off-shoot of Angela and Keith's fucked up branch." 

"Just tell us now. I'm sick of surprises." Steve grumbled. Funny, coming from a guy chalk full of them, Bucky thought. Still, he wholeheartedly agreed. 

Sharon sighed. Clearly this was all turning out to be a huge pain in her ass. "You probably caught a whiff of it earlier when I was talking to Amy. Elizabeth is Rose and Lisa's sister, and she's kind of crazy like her mom. Not in the whole 'I have impossible expectations set by my parents to live up to' crazy. Just, sad denial crazy. For example, she always has this really fake smile plastered on in the face of anything anyone ever has to say. Oh, you're going to be late home to dinner? Fake smile! Oh, you're missing Christmas this year for a conference? Fake smile! Oh, your dog died? Fake smile! And she will fight to the death with her sisters over their parents. I can understand wanting to defend Angela, Rose and Lee can definitely be harsh, but like I said, she's kind of crazy herself. She's so quick to deny that Angela and Keith might have messed up down the line that at times I'm surprised she doesn't carry around extra pants because surely hers must always be on fire." 

"That doesn't sound so horrible. She's a Stepford wife that needs just as much therapy as the rest of her family." Bucky was starting to think everyone in the tent needed a little therapy. Where was Sam when you needed him? He was probably dicking around when Hawkeye on Call of Duty right about now. 

"You spoke too soon. There's also her husband, Mike." Sharon said his name with such venom it dribbled down her chin, down to the floor where it burned a hole through he fake wooden floors meant to protect everyone's shoes from the mud. 

"Wait, hold up. Before you say anything, are we talking some sunglasses indoors and 'I tripped down the stairs' crap, because I refuse to believe that you or any one else in this family hasn't done something about it if so." Steve interjected. Bucky hoped that that wasn't the case. He didn't think could take any more disappointment from Peggy's family. 

Thankfully, Sharon looked appalled at the very idea. "Of course not! If he ever laid a finger on her, Aunt Peggy would have gutted him herself in one of her moments of lucidity. Mike is just an asshole. Like, worse than Amy's Mike, that's how big of an asshole he is." 

"So he's more of an asshole than the guy who treats his kids like soldiers and gives everyone the cold shoulder, but he's not so much an asshole that he would blatantly mistreat his wife. What does that mean exactly?"

"Mostly that he's a vapid WASP and a card-carrying member of a country club where he spends all his time because his ancient oil tycoon grandfather pays for everything, even little Angie's diapers." Sharon explained. "We all hate him, but for how he treats _us_ , not Elizabeth. He and Lizzy _adore_ each other."

"How are he and Elizabeth 'fucked up' then?" 

"They're both just in extreme denial of reality. Ever hear of bubble-babies? Those kids who didn't have immunities when they were born so they had to stay in a bubble for the first couple years. Well, Elizabeth and Mike are like those kids whose parents were so paranoid they were never taken out of the bubbles. They're super sheltered, paranoid, and in denial of the real world."

"Give me an example." Bucky challenged Sharon. 

"Mike's voting for Trump." 

"Oh." Steve and Bucky chorused. 

After that, Bucky dreaded meeting the Stewarts, convinced that they would be the straw that broke the camel's back. That camel being Steve, but also Bucky's patience for people. The introductions had left him feeling drained not dissimilar to the way reading  _Bucky Barnes' Son_ had left him emotionally exhausted. Thankfully, a man stepped up to the podium shortly after their talk with Sharon and asked everyone who hadn't taken a seat yet to do so. The press sat in the back rows, near the tent's entrance, while Peggy's family filled the front rows close to the collage and podium. The middle rows were stuffed with family-friends, officials from various government entities, and old men. Natalia had to sit in the back with the reporters thanks to her guise, Steve sat in the middle rows with Stark and Pepper, and Bucky was forced to sit up front with Sharon and her family. The first speaker was Dennis. 

"Don't hate me when I say I always had an idea of what I would say at my mother's funeral, even as a kid." Dennis began, looking out over the tent's occupants, challenging someone, anyone to do just that. He looked a lot like his mother then. "Growing up, there were many things I didn't know. I didn't know exactly what my parents did for a living, except that it meant there was always plenty of risk of them dying. I didn't know when they went off on those trips for weeks at a time if they would be coming back to me and my sisters. I didn't know what was so important that they had to miss my little league games and my eleventh birthday. And I still don't know how they could stand to give up so much. It killed me to miss any moment in my own kids' childhoods. I can only imagine what it felt like for Mom and Dad. In the end, I can only guess that they were much more selfless people than myself.

"And there were a lot of times when I was a kid that I didn't see that, or understand it, or even really care. But deep down, I always knew that if there ever came a day when Mom came home, and Dad didn't, or Dad came home, and Mom didn't, that if I had anything to say about either of them it was that they were the most selfless, kind, brave, and strong person I knew. They always encouraged me and my sisters to do our best, to fight hard for what we believed in, and in the face of any obstacle, be scrappy. I knew this. I knew it in my heart, if not always in my head, and I knew that one day I'd have to say it to a room full of family and friends and fucking reporters. I knew it." Dennis took a long, deep breath through his nose. It whistled wetly. His cheeks and eyes were red. He looked ready to cry. He looked irritated at himself for that. More importantly, he looked like a grieving son. "I knew it." Dennis repeated, his throat raw from the effort of containing his emotion. "And it still hurts worse than anything." 

Julie stood up and went to her husband's side. She laid a hand on his arm and stood by his side as he finished his speech. With his raw, wet voice, Dennis commended his mother for her achievements and lamented her loss but undercut it with remarks that she lived a full life. There was nothing to lament or pity about Peggy Carter Dugan's life. There was everything to celebrate, in fact, and Dennis stepped down from the podium with the request that anyone who could to share an uplifting story about his mother. He pressed a kiss to Julie's cheek right before she took his place at the podium. 

"I get to say something very special: that my mother-in-law was my friend first. Growing up, Peggy would often write to and call my father, Jim Morita. He lived in Fresno after the war, far away from all the other Howling Commandos, and did not continue his Commando exploits after the war like many of the others did. Instead, he went to work for a telephone company and married my mother. Of course, this was all very boring, so he depended on Peggy and Dum Dum's letters for thrills. I grew up sitting in my father's lap, reading those letters. When I was twelve years old, and it seemed like the whole world was out to get me because I was not only a girl, but I was not white, I started writing to Peggy on my own for advice. Of course I had my parents, but I also wanted to hear from a woman who, from all that I had heard, had taken a baseball bat to every ceiling she had ever encountered. My parents, Peggy, and Gabe Jones all gave me such wonderful guidance growing up. Thanks to them, I was able to overcome not only the obstacles in front me, but the ones inside of me.

"I remember once, in a letter to Peggy, I made the mistake of asking her if she was sure a 'meek Asian girl like me' could compete in a white man's world." Julie chuckled sardonically. " _Boy_ , did she let me have it. No, not really, actually. Peggy was stern, but never what you could call 'yelly'. I remember her reply perfectly, though. 'Julia Morita, late last summer you pushed my son out of the tree house for presuming you had climbed up there to kiss him. I do not believe that fits the definition of 'meek'. However, if you truly do feel yourself to be of a shy, reserved nature, I will not trouble you for it. There is, after all, nothing wrong with meek girls, just as there is nothing wrong with boisterous girls, bookish girls, fashionable girls, tall girls, wide girls, or girls that like girls. However, I must contest that your meekness has anything to do with your Japanese ancestry. I am sure your mother and father would agree. If anyone assumes that the two are somehow related, I must implore you to educate them on the concept of causation versus correlation, and if they insist on their fatal logic, push them out of a tree house.'" The tent rumbled with low chuckles. For the first time, true smiles graced the faces of Sharon's family members, ten times more brilliant than the polite ones they had given Blake earlier.

"Fifteen years after I received that letter, I married Dennis. On my wedding day, I wondered if this would change things. I worried that I would lose the friend and mentor who had for so many years served as both an example and cheering fan on the sidelines for me. I wondered if I could go on pursuing my career without such a driving force at my back. I honestly worried that becoming mother and daughter-in-law would turn us into one of those petty caricatures of women hating each other." Julie's face lit up with a wonderfully relieved, nostalgic smile. "Then Peggy knocked on the door of that little room at the back of the church. She stepped inside, looked me up and down with a smile, and hugged me. I knew then that everything would be okay. And it was. It's been thirty some years since that day. I can still feel that hug just as well as I can hear my father's voice in my ear, cracking stupid jokes, and smell my mother's perfume." Julie remained remarkably composed until the very end, only seeming to tear up as she yielded the podium to Sharon.

Sharon talked about how Peggy had inspired her personally, telling a little story about a picture of Peggy with Roosevelt on her desk, and Peggy's advice to her to plant herself like a tree next to the river of truth in the face of adversity. Bucky watched her eyes move across the room as she spoke. At first she seemed to look unseeingly over the crowd. Then her gaze drifted over her family towards the back. When it remained fixed on a certain point for the duration of her speech, Bucky knew she had found Steve.

There was a break from Peggy's family after that. An old man by the name of Owen Phillips took the podium next. Turned out he was Colonel Philip's grandson, and from the way he carried himself, a former agent of SHIELD. He spoke abstractly of being under Peggy's tutelage early on in his career, and he commended her for her iron will, strong sense of justice and morals, and most of all, for kicking his punk ass into shape. One ass-kicking stuck out in particular, however; Owen had been being especially snot-nosed one day while training and had been arguing with Peggy about his qualification for field work. It was apparently a rather vicious exchange where Owen made the mistake of comparing himself to none other than Steve Rogers. As punishment, Peggy forced him and all his team mates to do drills. An hour later, while they were in the middle of push-ups, a grenade rolled into the middle of their pack. Everyone ducked for cover, including Owen. When the grenade didn't go off, they all slowly climbed to their feet and Peggy emerged from her hiding place. She walked up to Owen and said, "The day you jump on that grenade to protect your comrades is the day you're as good as Steve Rogers."

After Owen was a series of officials from various governments and international agencies. None of them had stories to share, so it was basically hearing a record skip for upwards of a half hour. They called Peggy a hero, an icon, a ceiling-breaker, a friend to [insert country/agency here], and commended the same qualities of bravery, intelligence, and iron will again and again. But that was all okay. Peggy probably went without a lot of thanks in her lifetime, Bucky figured, so this was kind of like back-taxes.

There was a return to form following the officials with Peggy's grandkids speaking. Joel waltzed up to the podium and spoke extensively on how awesome his grandma had been, and how he has always strove to be as awesome--more so, even, if that was possible. He told a sort of touching story about Peggy and Dum Dum taking him and Tricia to New York City when they were kids. Joel and his sister were given a unique tour of the city, based on Peggy's time there rather than the Statue of Liberty or the Empire State Building. Joel remarked that he had never found an alley interesting until his grandmother showed him the one she'd beaten three Russian spies within an inch of their life in. 

Tara touched on a half-forgotten aspect of Peggy's character: her charitable heart. She spoke in-depth about the woman she remembered from her childhood who would buy 100 fresh cans for every canned-food drive. She recalled Peggy speeding down a muddy dirt road ten miles from her house just so she'd have an excuse to pay the car wash raising money for the family whose house had burned down extra. In her old age, before she started losing her memory, Peggy had apparently been known to feed about ten stray cats in the neighborhood on her back porch. 

There was a moment of palpable panic among the front rows when Angela took the podium. Bucky waited with baited breath for what she might say. Beside him, Sharon exchanged glances with various family members, having a silent, yet frantic conversation about the sudden turn in events. Their worrying was for not, however. Angela looked out over the crowd and paled. She looked down at the podium as if wondering how she had gotten up there, and fled back to her seat without a word. It was then that another surprising person took center-stage, something Bucky thought he would never think about Tony Stark. 

Stark stepped up to the podium with a casual air that had Bucky worried he was going to do something worse than Angela might have. "I'll tell ya, growing up with this bunch and all the other Howlie kids must have been divine punishment. I had to have drowned a hundred some puppies last time around." Stark began, jabbing his thumb at the Dugan siblings in the front row. A low, awkward chuckles made the rounds of the tent. "No, no, I'm serious." Said Stark in a completely unserious manner. "I was the youngest. Dennis, Angie, even Amy, they were all like ten years older than me. I remember dreading those reunions they'd have every couple years. Because I was just a little kid in a sea of rowdy, hormone-addled teenagers who always seemed to be blowing a gasket over something I thought was stupid at the time, like girls or rock stars or clothes. Hearing that from me must be a shocker, I know, but contain yourselves. There are far bigger surprises to come. 

"Oh no." Bucky and Sharon muttered in unison. 

"Dennis was a real menace, ya know. It wasn't just a nickname for the sake of a good rhyme." Stark went on, sending Dennis a meaningful look down in the first row. Dennis barked a laugh in response. "He was always into something, just like his parents. For example, you know how earlier Julie mentioned that she pushed him out of a tree house for trying to kiss her? That sort of thing happened all the time. Delphine Jones knocked him into the pool once for trying to kiss her the summer before that, and I distinctly remember him having the seat of his pants ripped off by the rapid dog next-door when he climbed the fence to steal back a lost baseball. Another time, he put a salamander in the punch bowl, and there were several occasions where his pet rat found its way up someone's pants legs. And don't get me started on all the times he told me I was adopted. I lost count. Amy, what about you?" 

Laughing, Amy replied, "I stopped counting at a hundred and seven." 

"You're adopted. There, a hundred and eight." Dennis taunted his sister with a grin. 

"A damn menace, like I said." Stark declared. Slowly but surely, Stark defused the tension in the tent. Sharon's family laughed freely at Stark's steady stream of funny anecdotes. From Dennis' antics as a teenager to Reggie Falsworth's status as everyone's 'cousin who always one-ups you' to the crush everyone had on Gabe Jones' lovely French daughters. At the back of the tent, the reporters worked furiously to document it all. Bucky was thankful for a lighthearted picture of the childhoods of the Dugan kids. It was not beyond him that had things turned out differently, he would have watched them grow up. He might have met them when they were a few hours old, rather than a few decades. Of course, it was also not beyond Bucky that had things turned out differently, the family he sat among might not exist. He wondered what Steve thought of it all. If he did, at all, or if he avoided such a thought it like the plague. 

Stark went on for a bit, concluding with a reminder as to why exactly they were all there. "My parents were older when I came along. My dad didn't have any siblings to begin with, and my mom's were all either dead or in the clink for perpetuating Italian stereotypes. So my aunts and uncles growing up were my parents' old friends. Jim Morita, Monty Falsworth, Gabe Jones. Dum Dum Dugan, and Edwin and Sarah Jarvis, the colonel--not the chicken guy, though he was everyone's grandpa, really--and of course, the great Peggy Carter." Stark chuckled. " _The great_. Ya know, when I was a smart-mouthed kid--before some good friends kidded my ass into a smart-mouthed adult--I used to call her to 'the great' with the sarcasm dripping down my chin. To her face. You can imagine how that worked out. Peg could give as well as she took, and she was never shy to punish me like I was her own kid. The number of times I washed her old Ford Mustang--God, did anyone really wonder when I cried when that North Korean spy blew it up? 

"The thing is, though, she never tried to prove me wrong. She never sat me down and lectured me on why she was empirically the most awesome woman I'd ever come within a mile of besides maybe my mom and the original Aunt Angie. If she had, by now I would have invented a time machine just to introduce her to Pepper Potts and the likes of Natasha Romanov and Dr. Jane Foster. Not to prove her wrong exactly, but because I'm sure they'd all have made great pals. She and Pepper could have started a support group for women exasperated by their Stark co-workers. The point being, Peggy was a lot more humble than I think we give her credit. More humble than she probably ought to have been at times. There is so much that she did that we the public, her close friends and family even, had no idea of up until a few years ago. Aunt Peg had so much she could have thrown back in my stupid twelve-year-old smartass face. But she didn't. And I think we should all take a moment to think about that." 

The memorial service ended with everyone moving outside of the tent to watch some park groundskeepers plant a sapling oak and then fix a tiny plaque into the earth with it. The reporters left first, followed by the officials, and then by family friends. Sharon's parents and sister left next. Eventually, only Sharon, Steve, and Blake remained with Peggy's children and grandchildren surrounding the tree. To Bucky, it seemed a rather pathetic memorial. He urged himself, however, to think of it twenty, thirty years in the future when it would be more fit to represent Peggy's legacy. If the sapling was tough enough to weather the horrendous English weather, to brace against each strong wind, and could withstand the brash children that played in the park each day, one day it would be a beautiful, tall oak tree that might serve as a better reminder of Peggy Carter than some gray and miserable gravestone. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We will finally be returning to the Bucky Barnes' Son plot in the next chapter. I just thought I should give Peggy's death its due attention.
> 
> Thanks for reading, leaving kudos and comments, and most of all for putting up with my hiatuses.


	12. UPDATE

So...it's been over a year, and I know that there are people out there who are still holding out hope for this story being completed, and I have assured these people that this would be the case. I am very sorry for this fake out.  

As I've said before, a lot of my difficulty with continuing this story stems from waning interest in the source material, a busy IRL schedule, computer troubles, etc. etc. etc. 

But, one reason I have not disclosed till now for my long hiatus is that I look back on the earlier chapters (usually in reference to trying to write the real Chapter 12) and I _hate_ what I wrote. It's frustrating because I believe I have improved somewhat since I last updated this story, and that I could use the bones of what I have now to write something better by margins at least. It would just be a matter of heavy editing, something I can get done pretty fast usually (I have been reposting old stories from fanfiction.net here, heavily edited, to keep the account active, so I have a _bit_ of practice), and I could do it more easily in my free time even during school time because I have the existing chapters as a sort of outline. 

So in order to eventually update this story for real, I feel I must go back and heavily edit what I have so far to be happy with it enough to continue.

I am almost dead set on this. 

My only concern is whether I should just edit from the story as it exists now, which I worry may confuse people--especially newer readers--since until I am finished with all the revisions, the story would probably come across as very inconsistent. Readers don't always carefully read Author's Notes at the start of chapters, or even at the end sometimes. 

Or if I should start a separate story explicitly labeled as the Edited Version or the Rewritten Version for simplicity's sake, though in this case I worry about old readers thinking the story is abandoned because then the original would not be updated.

(Keep in mind, that the original would not be deleted in order to preserve all your comments, many of which have been filled with helpful criticism that I hope to use in the editing process. If such a thing is allowed on Ao3, I am frankly unsure...But if the fate of the original chapters somehow worries you and would effect your decision, rest easy, because I would keep the original up for as long as possible.) 

I don't know which to do, so I will leave the question with you guys. Please leave me your thoughts in the comments.

Have a wonderful day. 


	13. FINAL UPDATE (ON THIS VERSION)

First things first, thank you all so very much for your feedback!

Second, I have posted the first chapter of the revised version. It is also included with this one as part of a series so that way you can find it easily. But here is also the URL for the Revised Version as well: http://archiveofourown.org/works/12206397/chapters/27721182

This will probably be my last time updating on this particular work - all new updates will be placed in the Revised Version. 

Thank you all again, very much. 


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